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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

> It surprised me that people define theirselves via their CV: “Who are you?” -> “Here is what I have done in my professional life!”. Anything weird about that?

I wouldn't expect my potential employer to be interested in my family, hobbies or beliefs. So I would respond with job-related stuff as well.

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Well, indeed. Traditionally those have been used to discriminate against people. To the point that any competent HR department will ban you from asking women interviewees about children.

In some countries (e.g. Germany), asking such questions violates labor law.

In the US, the questions are not per se a violation of the law, but you are treading on very thin ice because using the answers to such questions in a way that has a disparate impact on anyone because of their gender, age, family status, religion, etc is a violation of the law, even if you did not intend to discriminate against people on that basis.

Just out of curiosity, does it matter what the questions are actually about? Even in the US if you ask a woman if she plans on getting pregnant you're going to have issues. But I would imagine if a woman was answering a general "tell me about yourself" type question and mentioned her kids, the interviewer might ask a follow up, particularly if they have a similar interest or something (obviously staying away from "so are you going to have more?" or whatever).

I'm a guy so I've never been asked about kids until after being hired, and even then just conversationally at lunch.

Agree. If the question is answered 'wrong' by most candidates, then maybe the question isn't so good after all?

This is largely a regional/cultural thing..

In Europe people tend to care more about these things because they're interested in creating a good healthy workplace. If you only wrote about your professional achievements, it would be a sign that your lack of a personality could cause problems within the workplace.

Everyone is different and there is no one-size-fits-all thing here that works for every country / job opportunity.

And it's also much harder in Europe to fire a problem employee.

I'm from Europe :) Poland to be exact. And I care about healthy workspcae, but I don't think anything said on interview can be an accurate indicator. It's inherently misleading situation, like a first date almost.

I was only asked similar question once on an interview for a foreign (Lithuanian FWIW) company ("do you have wife, children?"). It was jarring to me, I assumed they wanted to know if I'll be OK with crunch time. Maybe it's the way they asked (like another thing from a checklist).

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