20 Questions Employers Once Asked That Had Nothing To Do With The Job

Question 93 on Thomas Edison’s 146-question written exam required applicants to calculate the exact weight in pounds of the air contained in a room 20 x 30 x 10 feet (about 480 pounds). The New York Times published this on May 13, 1921, after the test leaked to the paper. Out of over 700 people who took it, only about 32 passed. Edison was said to have devised it to screen out college graduates who he thought were impractical.

In 1947, following World War II, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9835, which created federal loyalty boards to identify civil servants suspected of being members of the Communist Party. Soon after, defense contractors, universities, and private businesses began using similar loyalty questions on their employment applications. Simply declining to answer could get you placed on a blacklist, even before your first interview.

Back in 1934, Doncaster Humm and Guy Wadsworth, two psychologists, developed a 318-question personality test called the Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Scale that asked people such things as whether they liked blind dates. It was used by more than two million people seeking jobs during the 1940s and ’50s, including at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. The employers were interested in measuring emotional stability and how likely a person would be to conform. The question about dating could determine whether an applicant got the job.

Prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, typical applications asked applicants to identify their race or skin color. Employers would use this information to maintain segregated workplaces and to funnel non-whites into lower-paying, blue-collar jobs. There was no federal prohibition until Title VII took effect.

In 1917, the American psychologist Robert S. Woodworth designed a questionnaire for screening US military recruits called the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, which included a question asking if the subject had ever felt that people were watching him when he was out on the street. Between the 1920s and the 1950s, civilian employers began administering this questionnaire to job applicants as a means of screening for signs of paranoia or nervous instability. What started as a screening process for the armed forces became a standard hiring practice for the office.

Question 3 of Thomas Edison’s famous 1921 job-applicant exam asked applicants to locate the Volga River. Another question asked which countries bordered France. And one asked what city was famous for making china. When the exam hit the papers on May 13, 1921, it exposed just how much of Edison’s hiring process rested on geography trivia rather than the technical skills the jobs actually required.

In the 1940s, Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs, created the early versions of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), asking questions like whether you preferred stopping at soda fountains. Companies took the answers and sorted applicants into introverts and extraverts. Today, you can take versions of the test online for free, but back then, your employer used it to decide who was hired.

In the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, when married women applied for office and clerical jobs, they were sometimes asked if their husbands permitted them to work. The question was not required by law, as husbands had no legal right to prevent wives from working, but employers feared that a husband who didn’t want his wife to work would cause her to leave the job sooner than anticipated.

Many job applications prior to the 1960s included a question about whether a person had ever been arrested (not convicted). This meant that if you were picked up or questioned by the police and later cleared, released, or never charged, you still might have been turned down for a job because of it. The questions did not differentiate between an allegation and a verdict.

It wasn’t uncommon for job applications to have spaces for specific height and weight requirements. For office and retail positions, employers often imposed arbitrary height and weight limits. These limits frequently excluded women and East Asians, whose average height and weight tended to fall outside these ranges. The requirements were in no way related to a person’s ability to perform the job.

Between the 1930s and 1950s, certain companies asked prospective employees to write an essay by hand so that a graphologist could analyze their handwriting for supposed personality traits. According to graphologists, the degree of slant, the presence or absence of loops, and the intensity of pen pressure indicated honesty or emotional instability. Modern psychological research has discredited graphology entirely. There’s no correlation between it and success in the workplace.

Between the 1910s and the 1950s, job application forms routinely included a question about your father’s name and occupation. The idea was that knowing this would give the employer insight into your class and upbringing. And being from a working-class family might disqualify you from a management-track job no matter what skills or experience you actually had.

During the 1910s through the 1950s, school districts, local governments, and private businesses commonly requested that job applicants declare their religious affiliation and church-going habits. The employers themselves were often secular, but they used the answers to evaluate moral character. The screening method effectively eliminated Catholic, Jewish, and other non-Protestant candidates from most white-collar and civil service employment opportunities.

The application forms in use between 1910 and 1950 sometimes required people to give the birthplace of their parents and grandparents. Employers used this information to identify second-generation immigrants and enforce a kind of unofficial quota system against Eastern and Southern European, Irish, Jewish, and Asian people, preventing them from getting certain jobs and limiting their ability to get promoted.

Working mothers were routinely asked who would look after their kids when they were working, and what they’d do if their kid was sick. Never once was a man asked these questions, because caring for children was understood to be the mother’s responsibility alone.

Even years after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, job applications asked applicants how often they consumed alcohol. Personality tests included questions about drinking, and industrial employers like Ford Motor Company and the country’s largest railroads routinely dismissed regular drinkers, citing concerns about excessive absenteeism and workplace accidents. Ordering a drink came to represent a lack of self-control.

Decades before the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a federal law that prohibits pre-employment medical inquiries, potential employees had to answer questions about prior operations, physical ailments, and ongoing health problems on their job application forms. Often, they were immediately disqualified without anyone considering whether they could do the job in the first place.

During interviews, female applicants were routinely asked whether they intended to get married or have children anytime soon, hoping to avoid training someone who was likely to quit when she became engaged or pregnant. Such questions were not directed at men. It was assumed that women’s careers were fleeting and their domestic lives were paramount.

Prior to the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, which made it illegal for employers to punish their employees for participating in a union, some employers would directly ask job applicants if they were members of a union. Although the law didn’t stop the question, many employers continued to ask it throughout the 1940s and 50s. After all, who’s going to enforce the law?

For a long time, the marital-status options on a job application were simple: single, married, or divorced. The answers were used to apply “marriage bars,” employment policies that prevented married women from working in teaching and clerical positions, while married men were considered reliable employees who could be paid higher wages. Up to 75% of school boards and 50% of office employers enacted marriage bars between the 1920s and 1950s, according to labor economist Claudia Goldin. Same question. Different results.

This content was created with the help of AI.