Illegal Interview Questions

Written by Annie Kopera, DO

Recognizing and responding to illegal and inappropriate questions during residency interviews can be extremely challenging. 

As the medical student and interviewee, you are not the person in control of the social encounter, and it can be hard to speak up and tell a faculty member that they crossed the line.  Here, we will discuss recognizing illegal or inappropriate interview questions, different response strategies, and what can be done to mitigate the situation to help protect yourself and other applicants. 

Examples of these illegal questions include, but are not limited to:

·      Are you married?

·      Do you have children?

·      Do you plan to take parental leave?

·      What religion are you?

·      What ethnicity are you?

·      What gender are you?

·      What is your sexual identity?

·      Do you have any medical conditions?

·      Do you take any medications?

·      Do you have any disabilities?

·      What other programs have you interviewed with?

·      Where do you plan to rank our program?

When asked an illegal question, one strategy is to keep your response as brief and vague as possible.  This will enable you to stay professional and polite, without revealing further personal information.  Hopefully, this will also serve as a social cue to your interviewer that their question was unacceptable.  The downside to this strategy is that it may serve as an invitation for the interviewer to keep probing on the topic.  You also need to feel comfortable enough to share a small amount of personal information.  For example, if you are asked about your marital status, you can give a one-word answer.  You can look at them to let them know you are ready for the next question. 

This strategy will not work for all questions.  There may be some questions that you simply do not feel comfortable engaging at all, and this is perfectly fine! An example of a response would be: “I don’t feel comfortable answering this question, but I’ll be happy to take your next question.”  If you find the interviewer continues to ask for a response to the question or moves on to another illegal question, you could consider stating “I’m not sure how this information will contribute to my performance as a (your specialty) resident. I would prefer not to answer this question.” After the interview, please reach out to let superiors know what happened to you.  The faculty member asking these questions should be reported. 

Utilize faculty from your medical school to debrief the situation and ask for the next steps.  Your medical school faculty can even report the interviewer to program leadership on your behalf to keep you anonymous.  Most programs will offer a post-interview survey, so take advantage of this anonymous space to report the interviewer by name and state the illegal questions they asked. You can also reach out to the program director about the encounter; consider waiting until after rank lists are submitted so there is no chance you can be harmed. Odds are, you are not the only medical student being asked these questions by this interviewer.

Most feedback provided by candidates is taken seriously.  Your feedback will help protect future medical students and contribute to changing the culture of the medical field for the better.  Don’t forget that your rank list is in your hands, and you shouldn’t hesitate to move a program with this kind of faculty to the bottom of your list.  Hopefully, you will not need to use any of this advice during your interview season! Best of luck!