Avoiding Illegal Questions in Your Business's Job Applications

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Many business-supply companies offer inexpensive, preprinted job application forms. If you decide to create your own job application, however, give yourself some time to think about how much information you really need from a job applicant. (Generally, less is more.) In addition, if you design the application form to match your business needs, it generally works better than a resumé does as a candidate evaluation tool because the same information appears in the same place, regardless of the candidate.

Make absolutely sure that the questions you ask aren't discriminatory and are in line with federal and state laws. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by including questions in the application that relate to any of the following areas:

• Race

  
  



• Religion

  
  



• Sex or sexual orientation

  
  



• Age

  
  



• Ancestry or national origin (but you can ask whether a candidate is eligible to work in the United States)

  
  



• Marital status

  
  



• Arrests

  
  



• Military service

  
  



• Height or weight (unless directly related to job performance)

  
  



• Political preference or membership in social organizations

  
  



• Disabilities

  
  

Here are some other things you can't do during the preliminary stages of the hiring process:

• Unless you're casting for a film or TV show, you can't request an applicant to provide a photograph before employment.

  
  



• You can ask for an applicant's name but not for a maiden name or a spouse's maiden name. Such a question may be interpreted as another way of asking about the candidate's marital status.

  
  



• You can ask for the applicant's address, but not whether she owns or rents the residence or how long she has lived there.

  
  



• Most education qualifications are fair game, but some states prohibit you from asking for high school or college graduation dates. It's a dead tip-off for age.

  
  

Seek legal counsel to review your company’s job applications. Among other things, you want to make absolutely sure that the forms aren't in any way discriminatory.

Always require applicants to sign the application and affirm the accuracy of the information they furnish. This step doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the information is true, but it gives you some protection if, after you hire an applicant, he doesn’t work out and you discover that he lied on his job application.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/avoiding-illegal-questions-in-your-businesss-job-a.html