Presidential Campaigns and Illegal Interview Questions

Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Dennis Kucinich, John McCain, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson are among the Republican and Democratic contenders who have submitted their"resumes" and running for the job of the President of the United States of America. A recent high profile interview with one of those leading candidates made me wonder how many of us could stand the scrutiny of this kind of "interview from hell".

Let's face it, they are all up for a really tough and challenging job and as such the interview process necessarily needs to be tough and challenging. As each candidate experiences the longest, toughest interview of their life, they appear, to me at least, to be spending a lot of time answering "illegal interview" questions that don't say much about how they will do the actual job. These types of illegal interview questions which, by the way, would not be tolerated in other interviews, seem to be driving the hiring decisions, so to speak, and will have great significance in who ultimately gets the job.

These illegal interview questions actually have put some candidates in the spotlight more than others who might have preferred to discuss their qualifications for the job at hand.

For jobs, other than that of the President of the United States, hiring managers know to steer clear of the EEO minefields and avoid questions about Race, Color, Sex, Religion, National origin, Birthplace, Age, Disability and Marital/family status.

As the search for the best candidates narrow, the following are just some of the otherwise illegal interview issues that candidates from both the Democratic and Republicans are being asked.