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When you’re an interviewing a prospective employee, there are simply some things you can’t ask. There are the obvious questions that can lead immediately to an accusation of discrimination (such as asking about religion or sexual orientation), but there are also plenty of more subtle questions that can land you in hot water. Even if your business isn’t large enough to have a big human resources department and a lawyer to offer advice on the hiring process, you have to avoid problem questions.

Don’t Ask About Family

The moment you start asking a job applicant about his or her family, you’re opening up a can of worms. You’re asking questions that can touch on all sorts of situations that can create an opportunity to accuse you of discrimination. Questions about family can lead to answers that involve sexual orientation, whether a woman or a man can do a job better and even religion, depending on how your applicant answers. They’re all dangerous territory.

It’s tempting to try to get a feel for whether an employee will be in a position to put in long hours — but you can only ask that specifically, not whether an applicant has kids at home that he’ll need to get back to.

Don’t Ask About Citizenship

With crackdowns on employers hiring illegal immigrants, it seems like you should be allowed to ask if a job applicant is a U.S. citizen — but it’s actually against the law. That’s because there have been cases of discrimination against people who can legally work in the U.S. but don’t actually have citizenship yet.

The closest you can come to asking about citizenship is asking whether someone is authorized to work in the country. Luckily, that serves the same purpose most of the time, because illegal immigrants simply don’t have authorization to work in the country.

Don’t Ask If They Need Certain Holidays Off

Scheduling is a big issue for many companies. There are many constraints on what you can ask a prospective employee about her schedule, though, down to whether she wants a particular holiday off. Asking if an employee will want Yom Kippur off from work is, in the eyes of the law, the same as asking her if she’s Jewish.

You can ask about scheduling — such as whether or not an employee can work with your required schedule — but that’s about it.

You Don’t Want Too Much Information

There are job applicants that will volunteer all sorts of information about themselves during an interview, but you really want to keep your information to a minimum. You only want to know if a given applicant can fulfill a job’s requirements to your expectations. You don’t want any information that can lead to an accusation of discrimination down the line. That means carefully choosing your questions and even cutting off an interviewee if they offer up more information than you actually want.

Image by Flickr user Pulpolux (Creative Commons)

As you consider letting members of your team telecommute or hiring new employees to work only on a virtual basis, it may seem that you could be able to offer them a lower salary. After all, they won’t need to pay for transportation into the office, a business wardrobe and all those little expenses that go with working in an office, right?

Well, that’s not necessarily the case — and if you try to offer a lower salary to a telecommuting employee, you may find that you have a hard time convincing them to take it. Telecommuters may not be paying for gas to drive into work, but they are paying to maintain an office in their homes, a cost you’re likely to have gotten out of handling in your own office.

A Question of Benefits

For most telecommuters, the costs of being employed remain the same even if they are no longer coming into the office. That means a lower salary is out of the question — but that doesn’t mean that your business won’t be saving money.

With many telecommuters, you’ll find that the draw on benefits is reduced. Where once an employee might not have felt well enough to drive into work, you’ll likely find that — rather than taking a sick day — your telecommuting employees will work from their couch on days that they’re feeling poorly. You’ll likely find that your telecommuting employees take less personal time, especially if they have a little flexibility in the hours they need to work.

The cost of any in-office benefits, from stocking a coffee station to a public transportation benefit, pretty much disappear if your employees aren’t coming into the office, as well. You may not be reducing how much you pay in terms of salaries, but with telecommuting, you’re likely able to cut back on certain benefits without any problems.

The Need to Telecommute

If you don’t offer a telecommuting program already, you may find some employees who have a driving need to work from home offering to take a pay cut, even where other employees would refuse. For such employees, the mindset is different — telecommuting is a perk or a benefit, making it worth giving up a little of their take home salary.

However, such situations are becoming more rare as more employees realize that they can likely negotiate for the opportunity to telecommute based on the overall savings to an employer without offering to take a pay cut. When an employer has the chance to move to a small office, use less resources to simply have employees at work and so on, there’s usually more than enough of an incentive that a pay cut simply isn’t necessary. Run the numbers for your office — you may be surprised by what simply offering the option to telecommute can get you.

Image by Flickr user slworking2 (Creative Commons)