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[sugaree]

I disagree that this sort of information is readily available on facebook and/or google. I guess, if someone probed quite a bit or hacked my account (which has been deactivated through the duration of the job search and will only be activated again when I finish my degree), they could find that information. Even when I was on FB, my settings were ultra-private (for different reasons). I routinely checked my settings logged in from my husband's account and a fake account (I shared no "common friends" with the fake person). One could not even access my profile picture. I've made myself untaggable and then, even before that, my tagged pictures were private. I'm sure a s*** never to take a picture of myself even with a drink in my hand.

A google search turns up lots of info for me. It's all related to my teaching and academic career. But even on sites like spokeo and others, there's no indication of my marital status. In fact, even a search of my husband and my name paired together yield nothing.  There's certainly no information about whether I'm a parent or not. And, there's no images of me anywhere. I studiously avoid pictures (for vanity reasons).

I'm not saying that information isn't readily available. I just don't think that this is generally true.  

If we had a job applicant who was not present on the Net, we would suspect that the candidate had something serious to hide. You're much better off having an innocuous Facebook page, with no picture and just a few bland items of information. Otherwise you can some across as sinister or paranoid or deceptive.

The Fiona

Really? So, because I'm not on Facebook at (yeah, I said it. and I realize I'm probably the last hold out on this, but I will hold out forever because I'm not ever going to join!) you would toss my application? That's lame.

[fayefaye]

Really? So, because I'm not on Facebook at (yeah, I said it. and I realize I'm probably the last hold out on this, but I will hold out forever because I'm not ever going to join!) you would toss my application? That's lame.

I don't think Facebook matters per se, plenty of people are not on it. It would be a bit odd if a candidate had zero trace on the web. Not even a simple webpage or listing on some departmental website. Since most people have something, even if small, it would seem like you must have purposely opted out.

[tinyzombie]

I disagree that this sort of information is readily available on facebook and/or google. I guess, if someone probed quite a bit or hacked my account (which has been deactivated through the duration of the job search and will only be activated again when I finish my degree), they could find that information. Even when I was on FB, my settings were ultra-private (for different reasons). I routinely checked my settings logged in from my husband's account and a fake account (I shared no "common friends" with the fake person). One could not even access my profile picture. I've made myself untaggable and then, even before that, my tagged pictures were private. I'm sure a s*** never to take a picture of myself even with a drink in my hand.

A google search turns up lots of info for me. It's all related to my teaching and academic career. But even on sites like spokeo and others, there's no indication of my marital status. In fact, even a search of my husband and my name paired together yield nothing.  There's certainly no information about whether I'm a parent or not. And, there's no images of me anywhere. I studiously avoid pictures (for vanity reasons).

I'm not saying that information isn't readily available. I just don't think that this is generally true.  

If we had a job applicant who was not present on the Net, we would suspect that the candidate had something serious to hide. You're much better off having an innocuous Facebook page, with no picture and just a few bland items of information. Otherwise you can some across as sinister or paranoid or deceptive.

The Fiona

I think Facebook is a bad example here. I'd guess that we all know at least one sinister, paranoid, and/or deceptive person who has an account, for example.

Fayefaye gives better examples.

Really? So, because I'm not on Facebook at (yeah, I said it. and I realize I'm probably the last hold out on this, but I will hold out forever because I'm not ever going to join!) you would toss my application? That's lame.

[larryc]

Illegal questions include:

"Are those real? I mean, come on!"

"Could you scratch my back? There is this spot that I just can't reach... Oh yeah! OH YEAH!"

"The pork chop at this restaurant is delicious--wait, your people are not allowed to eat pork, right?"

"Can you guess what kind of underwear I am wearing? WRONG! I am not wearing underwear."

"Can we trade pills?"

[lbothwell3]

Funny that msparticularity cited Wisconsin law, as the UW-Madison is the ONLY place at which I have ever been asked illegal questions. The Institutions include other Big-10 schools, SEC, Big-12 and smaller schools. None ever posed such obviously illegal questions as did the SC at UW-Madison. And all the dean could say was, "I find that hard to believe."

OP, asking you about marriage, children, etc. is illegal. They can't ask, end of story. What they can do is ask things like "are there any personal or family issues which might cause you to miss significant amounts of work," etc. That is all. So if you say "no," and then miss weeks at a time because your wife/husband insists that you travel with for his/her job, then they can rightly hold you accountable.

[macaroon]

"Can we trade pills?"

Awesome.  That really might be an illegal question!

OP, asking you about marriage, children, etc. is illegal.

Noooooooooooo,  lbothwell3, asking those questions isn't illegal.    Discriminating on the basis of the answers is what is what is illegal.  Then the candidate has to prove that discrimination occurred, not "question asking".   

If the interview is 20 minutes long, and these questions come sandwiched between "Do you have a class C Commercial Drivers License?" and "Have you ever driven an armored vehicle before?", it's hard to imagine that the intent is anything BUT discrimination.  However, in the context of a 2 day job interview in a strange town, questions like what you're calling "illegal" questions are typically asked in order to try to find a way to assure the candidate that their personal needs can be met in the area. 

[larryc]

OP, asking you about marriage, children, etc. is illegal. They can't ask, end of story.

Citation please.

[msparticularity]

Funny that msparticularity cited Wisconsin law, as the UW-Madison is the ONLY place at which I have ever been asked illegal questions. The Institutions include other Big-10 schools, SEC, Big-12 and smaller schools. None ever posed such obviously illegal questions as did the SC at UW-Madison. And all the dean could say was, "I find that hard to believe."

OP, asking you about marriage, children, etc. is illegal. They can't ask, end of story. What they can do is ask things like "are there any personal or family issues which might cause you to miss significant amounts of work," etc. That is all. So if you say "no," and then miss weeks at a time because your wife/husband insists that you travel with for his/her job, then they can rightly hold you accountable.

I make no representations as to behavior at the institution; I merely provided a link to convenient summary of the applicable law--which, BTW, you might try reading up on before you make assertions about what is legal/ illegal.

[madhatter]

Funny that msparticularity cited Wisconsin law, as the UW-Madison is the ONLY place at which I have ever been asked illegal questions. The Institutions include other Big-10 schools, SEC, Big-12 and smaller schools. None ever posed such obviously illegal questions as did the SC at UW-Madison. And all the dean could say was, "I find that hard to believe."

OP, asking you about marriage, children, etc. is illegal. They can't ask, end of story. What they can do is ask things like "are there any personal or family issues which might cause you to miss significant amounts of work," etc. That is all. So if you say "no," and then miss weeks at a time because your wife/husband insists that you travel with for his/her job, then they can rightly hold you accountable.

I make no representations as to behavior at the institution; I merely provided a link to convenient summary of the applicable law--which, BTW, you might try reading up on before you make assertions about what is legal/ illegal.

I wish ignorance was illegal.

[macaroon]

Funny that msparticularity cited Wisconsin law, as the UW-Madison is the ONLY place at which I have ever been asked illegal questions. The Institutions include other Big-10 schools, SEC, Big-12 and smaller schools. None ever posed such obviously illegal questions as did the SC at UW-Madison. And all the dean could say was, "I find that hard to believe."

OP, asking you about marriage, children, etc. is illegal. They can't ask, end of story. What they can do is ask things like "are there any personal or family issues which might cause you to miss significant amounts of work," etc. That is all. So if you say "no," and then miss weeks at a time because your wife/husband insists that you travel with for his/her job, then they can rightly hold you accountable.

I make no representations as to behavior at the institution; I merely provided a link to convenient summary of the applicable law--which, BTW, you might try reading up on before you make assertions about what is legal/ illegal.

Oh, you can find plenty of websites, some even quasi-official, that will state that the questions are illegal.   These are intended to help people with limited cognitive abilities design interview questions for low-skill jobs.  There's no place for questions about marital status or natal country in a 15 minute interview for a stockroom employee at a hardware store.  It's still not precisely "illegal" to ask, but difficult to imagine a scenario in which the intent for asking was anything other than discriminatory. 

Nobody has ever brought this up on these fora, IIRC, but included in these "illegal" questions are any questions regarding citizenship, country of origin, or immigration status, beyond "Are you authorized to work in the US?"  Yet, at every single academic interview I've ever participated in on either side of the table, the candidate was casually asked, "Where did you grow up?"  At which point, the candidate always willingly and without hesitation said, "I was born in New Zealand, but I'm a Canadian citizen...."   As if the committee would go back and say, "Oh, sorry - we only hire California people here."

[aysecik]

I am very torn about this... On one hand, people ask where you are from, etc. to make a connection with you I think. They emphasize the multi-cultural aspects of the town and school, talk about others they know from there, and even talk about their visits. It is easy to tell in my case anyway - my undergrad institution is in my home city, abroad.

As for other illegal questions, especially regarding spouses and children... I don't know the intent in each case. Maybe it is to just make conversation or to get to know you personally, maybe because they are thinking that I am a woman of child-bearing age and might disappear for maternity... The thing is, if they are wondering that, they are thinking it even if they don't ask me. So if that is what they will make their decision on, it will not matter if they ask or I answer. In other words, they don't need to ask anything if they want to be discriminatory and I would never know. So why worry if I cannot change it? I will assume it is well-intended (even though illegal), and move on with my life and my interview.

Until other things change, not letting people ask questions is not going to make a difference in my opinion.

[seniorscholar]

As for other "illegal" questions, especially regarding spouses and children... I don't know the intent in each case. Maybe it is to just make conversation or to get to know you personally, maybe because they are thinking that I am a woman of child-bearing age and might disappear for maternity...

We're generally smart enough not to ask the question about spouse/partner and children -- and when someone does bring it up at a less formal part of the campus visit (drinks, drive to the airport, etc) it's always a friendly question, not a decision maker on our part. Remember, at an interview we are selling our school and our location, as well as deciding on our hire. Certainly when I was on the market long ago as a single parent I was very relieved when a woman on the committee would ask me privately "are you interested in hearing about the public schools system in [this city]?" And in our own big city, we want to help induce the best to come here by pointing out the various neighborhoods where the public schools are pretty good as opposed to those that have some of the worst schools in the country, and by mentioning (if we know it's appropriate) that our benefits (health insurance and all others) cover domestic partners as well as spouses.

[cibolo]

De-lurking with a probably unfounded worry: Sorry to dredge up a dead thread, but I do have a concern about a potential topic that could, it seems from reading here and in other threads on the forum, come up during the after-interview socializing (should it ever get that far.) The dreaded spouse question can be awkward in my case, since my spouse died several years ago. It comes up fairly often when I'm just meeting new people, of course, and no matter how I answer it -- "My spouse passed away," "I'm a widow/er," etc. -- the next question is nearly always some variation on: "I'm so sorry; may I ask how?" The answer is where this gets awkward for everyone. My spouse committed suicide. This happened more than ten years ago, and although I've worked through the grief process well, I still haven't come up with a satisfactory way to address the question. If I say "unexpectedly" or something similar, I'm being too brusque and it leaves both of us embarrassed. If I tell them straight out -- leaving out the details, of course -- the questioner is still mortified and I'm in the uncomfortable position of having given out far too much personal information too early in our acquaintance. Telling people that I'm single doesn't seem to suffice, either, since they often know by the time they ask this question that I have a daughter, and they then move on to asking if I'm divorced or still separated.

I'm very new to the academic job market and as a recent MA, I know that my prospects are currently fairly limited. I certainly don't want to scuttle my chances over an awkward social moment; I'm likely to have enough of those as it is. Is there any way to deflect this line of questioning that doesn't end badly?

Again, I realize that I'm probably worrying over nothing, but the issue of personal questions in the social-hour has come up several times while reading in this forum, and it's got me a bit concerned.

[icicles]

I am so sorry for your loss.

For what it's worth, I had a personal tragedy that I've had to respond to in interviews from time to time.  It relates to the loss of a parent (people don't mind chatting you up about your parents for some reason) and I end up discussing it more than I'd like because it comes up during innocuous conversations.

If I were you, I'd just say "I'm actually a widow/er" or "my spouse passed away" and then have an immediate followup comment prepared that can deflect the awkwardness of the moment. Perhaps something like "I'm looking forward to living in a place like this one because it's (peaceful/busy/whatever is true and nice about the town)." That way you are changing the subject and smoothing things over for a different part of the conversation. More importantly, you can feel in control of the campus visit and not feel on guard.

Most SCs will NOT ask a followup question after this kind of admission, FYI--instead, most people tend to say things like "Oh, I'm so sorry."

I had 6 campus visits and not once was there that kind of followup, if that helps. Well, except for the job talk Q and A.

[macaroon]

Awww, sorry cibolo.

I think icicles advice about a preplanned immediate follow up question is a good one.

I don't know if this is helpful or not, because I suspect after 10 years, you've already tried this one.

A very close friend of mine is a widow, and her husband (who was also my friend) died of something possibly more socially inconvenient than suicide - autoerotic asphyxiation.  When asked by people she doesn't know well, she typically says "there was an accident".   Rarely, someone will ask a follow up question, and most of the time it's "Was it a car accident?"  To which she'll respond, "No, but I'd rather not discuss the details if you don't mind."  

I've been with her when people have asked, and it goes over pretty well.  "Accident" is close enough to convey the "unexpected" part, and, she can pull it off without looking like she's lying.  Most people realize pretty quickly that they DO NOT want to hear about a fatal accident over dinner - if ever - and will quickly change the subject.