………and a reminder about the questions you need to avoid!

When you are interviewing for a potential new team member here's a reminder of the things that you can no longer ask them :-

• How old are you (try and work it out yourself from the dates they went to school / university on their CV)
• Their marital status (this may come up in the interview conversation but you can't ask directly)
• How many children they have (as for marital status!)
• Their plans to start or add to their family (a definite no no for both sexes)
• Their planned retirement date – only really relevant when interviewing older candidates in any case

However, one question that you might want to throw at your candidate that they probably won't have a pre-prepared answer for is :

"If we don't give you this job what would we, as a business, be missing out on"

They should give you a list of the things they believe they do really well or why they are different from other people you might be interviewing for the job …. but the phrasing of the question will momentarily put them off guard and, in my experience, give you a more honest evaluation of their strengths (and by omission their weaknesses).