
Ask HN: Recruiters asking personal questions at job interviews, I'm fed up - grover_hartmann
I&#x27;ll try to keep this short.<p>Basically, I had a job interview 2 days ago at some startup, I&#x27;m a self-taught programmer with over 20 years of work experience.<p>I&#x27;ve been working for several startups in the last 10 years and made significant contributions to high profile open source projects so I have a reasonably good working history.<p>2 days ago I had this interview with a female recruiter&#x2F;psychologist and the first thing she asked me was &quot;What&#x27;s your nationality?&quot; with a sarcastic smile.<p>I responded, and while I was expressing myself I got some funny looks from her that I thought was humiliating&#x2F;condescending.<p>I even saw she was talking with the employees and I know she was talking about me because I saw her stare me and they were laughing.<p>I thought it was maybe because I&#x27;m from a different country or because I don&#x27;t have a very good accent (I struggle with my speaking sometimes), but I hate when I&#x27;m being treated differently.<p>She also asked me about my education&#x2F;training, I said &quot;self taught&quot; followed by her saying &quot;Oh, so you are self taught. Uhmm...&quot; and I had to explain myself that it was never a problem.<p>I explained that I tried to apply for university in the country I currently reside but that immigrants are not allowed to enter the public university by law, even after me taking the exams and passing them.<p>She explained that the market would take me more seriously if I had a degree, I thought &quot;maybe she is right&quot; but I think it&#x27;s rude not to consider someone for their skills and experience.<p>Anyway, maybe I&#x27;m paranoid or something but I always observe the same patterns at job interviews, do I really have to tell you my nationality, age, education, marital status, economic status, where I meet my wife, if I have children, if I smoke weed, etc?<p>Is it reasonable if I can keep some of these things to myself?<p>As a recruiter, do you ever think about how the person being interviewed feels like when you are being so disrespectful?<p>Do you think that your startup is so special that you feel entitled to ask all sort of personal questions?<p>I don&#x27;t think these things have anything to do with the job at all, and I feel they always use one information or another against you.<p>Just because you live a normal life and you went to college and your job is being a recruiter for some startup doesn&#x27;t give you the right to be disrespectful to others. I didn&#x27;t had to do any of these things and I&#x27;m sitting here right in front of you, have you ever thought about that?<p>I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s fair and honestly, I&#x27;m really fed up of playing this game.<p>I&#x27;m not interested about climbing your corporate ladder, I just want to get work done.<p>Feel free to share your stories if you feel like, I&#x27;d appreciate any advice and sorry about the rant.
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hnzix
I used to get annoyed in these situations but now I think it's a good thing.
If the interview is that fucking horrid, the company culture is almost
certainly going to suck.

Thanks shitty interviewer for saving me from your shitty company.

~~~
grover_hartmann
Good point, thanks.

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exabrial
It's illegal for them to ask you that question, but I'm saying states it's
also illegal to not have a perfect balance of races employed. As a direct
result, you can expect targeted hiring based on race :/

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greenyoda
In the US, it's not actually illegal to _ask_ you about your nation of origin,
but it would be illegal to use the answer to discriminate against you. If a
lawsuit were ever filed against that company for discrimination, asking that
question might be used as evidence of their intent to discriminate. (They
_are_ allowed to ask whether you are legally allowed to work in the US.)

Asking about age is similarly problematic. If the applicant has 20 years of
experience, they may be approaching 40, and it's illegal in the US to
discriminate against job applicants over 40 years of age.

Any company with a sane HR department would immediately freak out and fire
their recruiter for asking these kinds of questions, which expose the company
to legal liability.

