Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, 5/e

Building Your Management Skills: Illustrative Discriminatory Employment Practices

Learning Objective 3

1. Give examples of what employers can and cannot legally do with respect to recruitment, selection, and promotion and layoff practices.

Federal laws like Title VII usually don’t expressly ban preemployment questions about an applicant’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. In other words, “with the exception of personnel policies calling for outright discrimination against the members of some protected group,” it’s not the questions but their impact. 109 So, illustrative inquiries and practices like those that follow are not illegal per se. For example, it isn’t illegal to ask a job candidate about her marital status (although such ...