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Monday, September 20, 2010

What NOT to Ask in a Job Application

By : Adrian F Alexa

In a hiring process, you want to be effective and productive, and narrow down your options as much as possible. Browsing through a pile of resumes takes up a lot of time and energy, and there's always the burden of having to read three pages of useless information to find one thing that would be relevant for the job opening you have. To avoid this burden, many companies choose to set up preprinted job applications, focusing on the fields they are most interested in. You can either let your human resources department design an effective job application form, or look into the services of various business-supply companies.

If you choose to design the application form without professional help from other companies, take the time to determine exactly how much information you really need. Require only the information you really need. Less is more, so stick to the essentials. Second of all, pay special attention to the questions you ask, so that they are not discriminatory or offensive in any way, and meet all federal and state laws. You cannot put questions regarding race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, nationality (you can ask, however, if the candidate is eligible to work in the U.S.), marital status, height or weight, arrests, political preferences, handicaps or any other question that would set discriminatory criteria.

Apart from the questions in the job application, there are also various other things you should not do in any stages of the hiring process:

-you cannot request the candidate to provide a photo before employment; it would be discriminatory and make you vulnerable for a trial;
-you can ask for the full name of the candidate, but you have no business in inquiring about his mother's maiden name, his wife's maiden name or anything like that; such a suggestion may generate various interpretations, and may come as just another way of asking about marital status;
-you can ask the candidate's address, but it is inadmissible to ask whether he owns or rents the residence, nor how long has he lived there;
-if you cannot directly ask the candidate how old is he, you also can't ask him when was he born, when did he graduate from high school, or any other questions meant to be a tip-off for age;

Basically, don't ask anything you don't really need to know. And let's face it, the law did not prohibit questions that are essential for finding good candidates. It simply excluded the ones which did not allow fair and equal opportunities. Ask just what is highly relevant for the job in question, and remember to require applicants to sign the application form and guarantee the accuracy of the information.

Job Vacancy , Indonesia Job , Job Indonesia


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