Job Interview Questions Webinar

“How old are you?” “Are you married?” “Where are you from?”

Most managers know that these questions are off limits during job interviews—they can lead to claims that you failed to hire job candidates based on their age, disability, gender, race, religion, or other protected characteristics.

However, that poses huge challenges when you (and your frontline supervisors) conduct job interviews: You don’t intend to discriminate, but you do need to ask lots of probing questions to screen applicants thoroughly and find the best fits for your open positions. And sometimes even just being conversational can lead you down a dangerous path it’s difficult to get off of.

Join us on March 29 for an interactive 90-minute webinar all about smart interview question-asking. Our two expert speakers will explain the legal dos and don’ts involved. Plus, we’ll give you question checklists and other materials you can use to train your managers.

You and your colleagues will learn:

• Best practices for conducting in-depth, probing interviews without crossing legal lines with your questions
• How to use your job descriptions, candidates’ resumes, and other materials to draft appropriate, useful questions
• The questions you should always ask in every interview—from current duties and transferable skills to teamwork experience and the reason for leaving the last employer
• The questions you should never ask—from age, citizenship, and disabilities to marital status, religion, and arrest records (plus, legally acceptable alternatives you can use instead)
• Why even the most innocuous questions (e.g., “How did you learn to speak Spanish?”) could lead to big trouble
• How to avoid other problems with interview questions, from failing to ask questions consistently during the hiring process and relying too much on hypotheticals to using language that could be construed as an oral contract
• What you should do to reduce your legal exposure when job candidates ask inappropriate or illegal questions
• How to safely backtrack when either interviewer or interviewee leads the conversation down a potentially dangerous path
• The dangers in making legal compliance—worrying about what not to ask—your primary focus in interviews

Tuesday, March 29, 2011
10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (PST)
11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (MST)
12:30 to 2:00 p.m. (CST)
1:30 to 3:00 p.m. (EST)

About your Speakers:

Luther Wright, Jr., serves as counsel in the Nashville office of the nationwide employment law firm Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, PC. He advises employers on the full range of labor and employment law issues and regularly defends them as an accomplished litigator in federal and state courts and during union and non-union arbitrations. Also, he speaks and writes frequently on employment law matters. Wright earned his law degree from Vanderbilt University.

Wendy V. Miller, Esq., is an associate in Ogletree Deakins’ Nashville office. She focuses her practice on employment litigation, defending employers in federal and state courts on a wide range of employment law matters. She served as law clerk to a state appeals justice before joining the firm. Miller earned her law degree from Vanderbilt University.

Approved for Recertification Credit

This program has been approved for 1.5 recertification credit hours toward PHR and SPHR recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI). For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HRCI homepage at www.hrci.org. The use of this seal is not an endorsement by HRCI of the quality of the program. It means that this program has met HRCI's criteria to be pre-approved