In a recent workshop, one of the participants explained, “I like to ask personal questions to see if the candidate will fit in with the team socially.”
Well, that's an illegal discrimination. * in the US, but not in other places. (It's illegal because if you reject a candidate based on their answer, you're discriminating about something not work-related, a big no-no in the US.) Even for non-US interviewers, I still think it's a bad idea.
People enjoy different activities at different times in their lives. Before I had children, I took bicycling vacations, camping and cycling for a week or two. But by the time I had children, there was no way I was going to spend precious vacation time doing something active when I could sleep in 🙂
Even without the obvious difference of kids/no kids, people choose to spend their time and money differently–a difference that doesn't make a bit of difference for the job.
Assessing cultural fit is important, and the questions you want to ask might be some of these:
- “Tell me about your greatest successes. What caused your success?”
- “Tell me about your greatest challenges. What caused them?”
- “How has the work environment helped you or prevented you from being successful?”
Now you've got a conversation about work, and how people fit in (or not) at work–a much more relevant set of questions than what people do in their off time.
* Thank you to askamanager for your comment. You are correct; unless you hit on a protected class, the questions aren't actually illegal. Ill-considered, not helpful, but not illegal.
Actually, it’s not illegal in the U.S. to discriminate for non-job-related reasons, as long as those reasons aren’t about race, gender, religion, or other protected classes. But it’s perfectly legal to not hire someone because you don’t like his taste in books or sports, or anything else unrelated to the work. Silly and stupid, but not illegal.