being asked if you’re married at a job interview
being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by drago99 on Jan 31, 2006, 11:47pm
I was recently at a job interview and the interviewer said, “I’m not legally supposed to ask this but are you married?”. Of course I told him the truth that I’m not married. I haven’t heard from him since the interview. This happened a couple of other times in the past and the interviewers (they were all men) all said ahead of time that they’re not supposed to ask the question. Has anyone here been asked that question, and if so, how do you handle it and keep the conversation positive at the same time?
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Mes on Jan 31, 2006, 11:51pm
Sue.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Bluto on Jan 31, 2006, 11:51pm
I would lie and say YES since he’s not supposed to legally ask you that and then if it ever became an issue say he didn’t ask you.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by TyHigs on Feb 1, 2006, 12:00am
Wouldn’t it be cheaper for a company to hire single men? Or is it that they know they have married men by the balls?
Never mind. Answered my own question.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by antiriad on Feb 1, 2006, 12:04am
So it’s coming down to this.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by toadman on Feb 1, 2006, 12:08am
yep.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Snakey on Feb 1, 2006, 12:26am
Say ‘engaged’. If it comes up later, after you’re employed, tell em you tragically broke up.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Mad Doc on Feb 1, 2006, 12:30am
I second the sue suggestion. also start taking some sort of voice recorder to those things.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by toadman on Feb 1, 2006, 12:55am
Legally you are “entitled” a lawsuit but it is an AW response. Find employment elsewhere and suck up and be the Better Man.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by chewbacca on Feb 1, 2006, 1:20am
Just say ‘I would rather not answer that at this time’.
Be polite. No sense picking a fight or lying.
It was not a legal question and you have no obligation to give an answer.
You compromise your morals by lying, and men are supposed to be examples of morality for others to follow.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by notaman on Feb 1, 2006, 1:39am
Feb 1, 2006, 12:00am, TyHigs wrote:Wouldn’t it be cheaper for a company to hire single men? Or is it that they know they have married men by the balls?
Never mind. Answered my own question.
There’s a lot of truth in that. Enron. Married to a debutante with a connected Daddy, too much mortgage, country club dues, fancy car payments, kids need orthodontics and college…these guys are trapped and will do whatever they are told to do.
It is not only the wives that have created this trap.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by notaman on Feb 1, 2006, 2:16am
Do you think that this trick question may be an indication that the company is involved in an illegal sideline? The question may be a test to see what you would do and you failed by being honest instead of throwing it back at them MYOB. Very suspicious- you don’t want to work there anyway.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by foxy on Feb 1, 2006, 2:49am
Totally, sue. That’s fucked up. I would have answered, “I respect the law, so I don’t want to put you in the position of breaking it, and so I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that.”
And then, when you don’t hear from him, SUE THE MOTHERFUCKER. 
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by jimt on Feb 1, 2006, 6:10am
Don’t sue. That’s weak and womanly. You’re better off not working there anyway.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Niall NLIT on Feb 1, 2006, 6:55am
Erm… I would definitely carry a recorder and upon being asked would say that I am gay but intend to get married as soon as this is legal in US to your lawyer boyfriend. I would then hit him up big time on the basis that you hope he will not discriminate against you because of this. Thats should get you any job you want.
As to being found out, I learned the hard way to keep my personal life away from the workplace and I would advise you to do the same and then your covered.
Easy.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Lee on Feb 1, 2006, 7:59am
Jan 31, 2006, 11:47pm, drago99 wrote:I was recently at a job interview and the interviewer said, “I’m not legally supposed to ask this but are you married?”. Of course I told him the truth that I’m not married. I haven’t heard from him since the interview. This happened a couple of other times in the past and the interviewers (they were all men) all said ahead of time that they’re not supposed to ask the question. Has anyone here been asked that question, and if so, how do you handle it and keep the conversation positive at the same time?
Reply “That question is close to being illegal…let’s talk about…”
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by hh on Feb 1, 2006, 8:06am
I like the response about saying you are engaged. Just don’t say what you are engaged to, for example, currently you are engaged with an interview.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Pomgran on Feb 1, 2006, 9:42am
Hell, that question gets asked a lot and not just men, I get women asking me that. The worst are equity firms who claim they want to know their candidate that they choose to run the companies they own. They clearly feel the law doesn’t apply to them. I had one ask if I was married, if I had any kids outside of marriage and I know they are illegal questions so I asked point blank how such information was helping them gage my ability to perform on the job? They didn’t have a real answer. Just said “we want our candidates to feel like they are part of the family.”
Such answers are bullshit and we all know it. Frankly, any company that has to ask such questions, I regard as not worth working for or being a customer of. If they like breaking the law on the small things, the probability is they are doing it on the big things and sooner or later they will get exposed and someone gets to take the fall. I’m not interested in that job.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by PassingBy on Feb 1, 2006, 10:11am
If they like breaking the law on the small things, the probability is they are doing it on the big things and sooner or later they will get exposed and someone gets to take the fall. I’m not interested in that job.
Whoa O_O good observation. That is an interesting way to look at it. It’s sad that its come to this, people need to realize that the ‘unmarried man’ stigma isn’t true anymore, whatever that stigma is…
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Mr Hindsight on Feb 1, 2006, 10:44am
Corporate America prefers married guys. An ideal chump is a 32 year old male with 2 pre-school kids and a pregnant, stay-at-home wife.
This guy usually has a big mortgage, car payments, and he’s hungry and broke. As such he has no power. He’ll do what he is told to do. His wife won’t allow him to take risk.
A single guy has more power and freedom.
Of course they would prefer the married guy.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by hh on Feb 1, 2006, 11:28am
Agreed, the single guy can just cut and run and take a job in another city (or country for that matter) anytime he wishes. A married guy is tied down because his wife works, kids are established in the school district, and the mcMansion that is worth crap now.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Pomgran on Feb 1, 2006, 11:45am
Most of the corporate world does not like risk, they want safe, even if safe means they don’t get the best candidate. The only time they really go for single guys is when the assignment is deamed high risk. Foreign post assignments in less than ideal locations are staffed by men, many whom are single (this is purely my observation). If you look at the nice locations, Paris, Rome, etc…, that’s where they send the families and single women.
As a single guy, I always get headhunters looking for me to go to Africa or Central Asia, the salaries are great, at least twice what you can make at home or in Europe plus benefit packages that are a dream in this country, that’s because all the wannabe business women don’t take those assignments and the wife doesn’t want the guy to go to such places as central Asia or Africa, thus we single guys can take a huge profit in such assignments. Until the wannabe business women decide it is trendy to work in those locations too, thus driving the salaries down.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by wizard66 on Feb 1, 2006, 3:11pm
Married men have more responsibilities than single men. Employers prefer married men cause they are more willing to play ball in company politics. A smart single man can just take his ball and go home anytime if he doesn’t like it. Being asked your marital status is an illegal question. Whether you choose to sue or not is up to you. But I don’t think choosing to sue is a “AW response” at all. If you don’t get the job you have a case of discrimination based on martial status which is illegal.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by The Author on Feb 1, 2006, 3:33pm
OTOH, married man might be less willing to work long hours? Has other responsibilities…kids…home…etc
Single men can work round the clock, when needed.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by anonymous on Feb 1, 2006, 4:57pm
You probably didn’t get the job for other reasons, not because you are “single”.
In fact, as an employer myself hiring single people is far more preferential to hiring married people for a variety of reasons.
For one, single people have lower health care costs since the employer doesn’t need to cover the dependents of the employee. Second, single people can be expected to work more flexible work schedules so if you have to execute a “death march” to meet a deadline that absolutely needs to be met for the survival of the business, you can count on the single person to be there, while a married person almost always punches in at 9 and out at 5.
Yah I don’t ask that question because I know the rules, but you can look on a person’s hand for a wedding band or get them to accidentally discuss their personal life without actually directly asking them.
In IT (the business I am in) companies like Cisco have been sued for allegedly discriminating against married people and older people since young nerds with no social life are the ideal worker bees, until of course they burnout and then you just hire another young geek out of college and rinse and repeat. Once you have used up all of those people, you then go to countries like India and China to use and abuse younger, unmarried workers and the dispense of them when they wear out like all the ex-employees you hired domestically.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that single people don’t get divorced? How is an employer going to motivate a divorced dad to work harder with more pay if that extra pay is just going to get garnished for back-child support. The only way to motivate the guy is to illegally and off the books pay the guy under the table and well the IRS doesn’t like that too much either (and a vindictive ex-spouse of an employee can fuck up your business beyond repair just by reporting you to the authorities).
Welcome to globalization and the race to the bottom. Pretty soon, you won’t be able to get a good paying job unless you are single because married people are just too damned expensive to employ anymore.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by toadman on Feb 1, 2006, 6:55pm
Excellent post, anon.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by kris on Feb 1, 2006, 10:02pm
I think the engaged thing is a good way to go.
Is it men interviewers or women that are asking this question?
I had one male interviewer for a job years ago indirecting ask me if I was in some kind of relationship. His question was “If I were to have a conversation with your girlfriend, what would she say about you?”.
The reason firms ask this question is because they like stability in the organization. If you’re married and have kids, it tells them that they can count on the fact that you may not be so eager to change jobs in the future due to the stress and instability of being a new employee somewhere else and you will more than likey stay with the company over the longhaul.
A single man or woman, wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if they felt they were starting to hated their job or felt they weren’t being treated respectfully. The result is they would walk out the door and go somewhere else. Companies hate this!
Working in my company, we’ve had a very high turnover rate here. Up until 2 years ago, the job market was very lean. Now, in the past couple years, more jobs are out there because our economy is better. Most are leaving our company for $10,000 more than what they made while here. As the run out the door, we can’t find good replacements fast enough. Most can’t either hold themselves properly in an interview, can’t answer questions, or worse have poor English speaking skills (Lot’s of 3rd World Immigrants here in Toronto). We have a spot that’s been vacant for a month and there’s still no sign of filling it. The guy who left was with us for 9 months and was a solid worker. Well, he got tired of the crap and moved on to something else.
I’ve already started looking myself. I’m tired of the crap too. Been here 6 years now and I still don’t get any respect. They give me all the brutal clients that were in horrible shape when I got them. I fixed them up and it’s like “Yeah, that was then, what can you do for us now”. I’ve had 2 teammates up and quit this past year who were hard working and got passed over for promotions. Reason being, once you get that nice “title”, most go and find a great job immediately thereafter.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by travis on Feb 1, 2006, 11:46pm
Yes, lie that you are married. After all, it’s an illegal question. So if you get in trouble for lying about your status, take that shit to 20/20 and sue the company. Say that you were under duress or something.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by anonymous on Feb 2, 2006, 4:17am
Feb 1, 2006, 10:02pm, kris wrote:I think the engaged thing is a good way to go.
Is it men interviewers or women that are asking this question?
I had one male interviewer for a job years ago indirecting ask me if I was in some kind of relationship. His question was “If I were to have a conversation with your girlfriend, what would she say about you?”.
The reason firms ask this question is because they like stability in the organization. If you’re married and have kids, it tells them that they can count on the fact that you may not be so eager to change jobs in the future due to the stress and instability of being a new employee somewhere else and you will more than likey stay with the company over the longhaul.
A single man or woman, wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if they felt they were starting to hated their job or felt they weren’t being treated respectfully. The result is they would walk out the door and go somewhere else. Companies hate this!
Working in my company, we’ve had a very high turnover rate here. Up until 2 years ago, the job market was very lean. Now, in the past couple years, more jobs are out there because our economy is better. Most are leaving our company for $10,000 more than what they made while here. As the run out the door, we can’t find good replacements fast enough. Most can’t either hold themselves properly in an interview, can’t answer questions, or worse have poor English speaking skills (Lot’s of 3rd World Immigrants here in Toronto). We have a spot that’s been vacant for a month and there’s still no sign of filling it. The guy who left was with us for 9 months and was a solid worker. Well, he got tired of the crap and moved on to something else.
I’ve already started looking myself. I’m tired of the crap too. Been here 6 years now and I still don’t get any respect. They give me all the brutal clients that were in horrible shape when I got them. I fixed them up and it’s like “Yeah, that was then, what can you do for us now”. I’ve had 2 teammates up and quit this past year who were hard working and got passed over for promotions. Reason being, once you get that nice “title”, most go and find a great job immediately thereafter.
Well what you are saying is certainly conventional wisdom in some circles, and yes it sucks when people job hop like crazy (and single people are more likely to job hop), but then again you have to weigh the married person’s health care costs for the entire family (assuming your company even offers health care as a perk), and the fact that they will almost always be less willing to travel, less willing to work the hours necessary to get the job done (if kids need picked up at school, guess what takes a priority even if the life of the company is at stake), and married people tend to be more prone to groupthink because they care more about keeping a stable job, than actually excelling in their career.
Plus, if you have to layoff or fire a single person, people generally care less, but if the person has a family to support, it generally hurts company morale a lot more.
In the days of the “Leave it to Beaver” generation, the man focused on work and the woman focused on the home and making sure the kids got to school and got back.
Now, married people with dual-incomes basically end up doing a half-ass job at work and a half-ass job at home, because the logistics of how they operate their lives are incredibly inefficient, and if they happen to divorce while you are employing them, they are as good as useless at that point most of the time due to depression and lost time and attention they have to spend dealing with all of the drama of a divorce. Then after the divorce, they have to split their work time in half to do two full-time jobs (raising the kids, and bringing home the bacon).
So basically, single people without kids are an employer’s best bet in the long run, even if they happen to job hop from time to time. If marriage was a stable institution and people rarely got divorced, then I might be singing a different tune, but right now married people are usually pretty mediocre workers for reasons beyond their control.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by Dan on Feb 14, 2006, 10:27pm
I vote on the “you don’t want to work there option”. I personally oppose government regulation of hiring requirements, and think businesses should be able to setup whatever requirements they want. If they want only closeted homosexual ex-rodeo clown fire dancers, that’s their business I guess. It just works to their detriment to not hire the most qualified.
At least they’re tipping their hand during the interview, instead of the subtle biases showing up after you’re hired.
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Re: being asked if you’re married at a job interview
Post by sirchancealot on Feb 15, 2006, 11:06pm
A nice reply (especially if they admit that they know they aren’t supposed to ask that question) is “I’m more concerned with why you are asking a question that you know you aren’t supposed to ask. Is this standard behavior for employees here?”
It puts them in the defensive.
On the other hand, my most recent boss asked me that in the interview, and I looked at him and said “Why do you ask?”. He admitted that he wasn’t good in interviewing people, and he was just using it as small-talk.
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