What's legal and illegal to ask while interviewing a reservist/ National Guard for a new job.
BSkalos
1 Post
When you are conducting an interview with someone who is in the National Guard or is a reservist what questions are legal and what is not legal to ask while interviewing. Would like to know because if the person does not get hired, don't want the person to get the impression that time needed off to fulfill duty would be the reason they were not hired.
Comments
[quote user="BSkalos"]When you are conducting an interview with someone who is in the National Guard or is a reservist what questions are legal and what is not legal to ask while interviewing. Would like to know because if the person does not get hired, don't want the person to get the impression that time needed off to fulfill duty would be the reason they were not hired.[/quote]
The more you ask about availability and outside activites that might interfere, the more likely you are to give the applicant the impression that their service was a factor. I'm not as up as I would like to be on this but I'm pretty sure considering actual, contemplated, or past uniformed service in initial hiring decisions is a USERRA violation (if I were guessing, I'd say it was a violation of section 4311 of Title 38, Chapter 43 of the US Code: http://www.dol.gov/vets/usc/vpl/usc38.htm#4311)
As someone who was in for ten years and listed their NG service as prior work experience, I would say stick to questions that relate to job-related experience that the applicant may have received while serving. Maybe even "How do you think your military service will benefit you in this position?" and see if they open up about leadership, confidence, etc. You cannot ask what type of discharge they received or their status.