When Is a Job Interview Too Personal?: Recruiters Prying Into Candidates’ Lives as Border Security Agency Questionnaire Slammed Essay

When Is A Job Interview Too
Personal?: Recruiters Prying
Into Candidates’ Lives As
Border Security Agency
Questionnaire Slammed
Matt Kwong
Braving tough questions during a job interview is one thing.
But the Canada Border Services Agency’s deeply probing “integrity
questionnaire” is a test that the Customs and Immigration Union says goes
too far—with queries about applicants’ drinking and gambling habits, their
circle of friends, and even their histories of soliciting prostitutes.
Amid objections to the federal agency’s 57-question survey for new
recruits and aspiring career climbers, employment lawyers say job seekers
are expecting interviewers to get more in-depth and personal when judging
prospective hires.
And that could potentially spark legal wildfires, depending on how
invasive the questions are.
“Some of the questions employers are asking are beyond the bound
-
aries of what’s appropriate,” said James Heeney, a Toronto employment
lawyer with the firm Robinson Heeney LLP.
“The issue is if someone wants a job, they’ll often answer them
because they don’t want to lose the opportunity.”
Mark Rouse, a partner with the Toronto recruitment firm IQ Partners,
said clients have been asked anything from whether they’ve ever been fired
for stealing, to: “If you’re reincarnated as an animal, what animal would it
be?”
Dorian Persaud, a Toronto lawyer whose practice areas include work
-
place investigation and employment law advocacy, said he’s heard of inter
-
viewers in the education sector prying into how many romantic partners a
potential hire has had.
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Kwong, Matt, “When is a job interview too personal?: Recruiters prying into candidates’ lives as
border security agency questionnaire slammed,” CBC News (9 October 2012) www.cbc.ca/
news/canada/story/2012/10/08/f-invasive-job-questions-cbsa.html. Reprinted by permission of
CBC.
“They’ll look at those things as indicators of stability, to determine
whether a...