By: Rachel Levy, Deputy Executive Director MAA @mathcirque

What should you do when someone asks you an interview question that they shouldn’t ask?

As a companion to MAA’s 101 Careers in Mathematics and SIAM’s BIG Jobs Guide, we have developed the BIG Career Interview Card Game to help people practice for internship and job interviews. Brea Ratliff (math ed) and Ray Levy (applied math) were fortunate to work with Nicole Morgan, a certified Human Resources professional, to create the game. Brea field-tested it at MAA MathFest 2019 and now the game can be purchased through the AMS online bookstore. 

Here’s how you play

First, each player chooses a JOB card. Choosing a job from the many options helps players learn about the many careers available to people with expertise in the mathematical sciences. A “make up your own job” card allows for creativity and new careers of the future.

Next players deal out the ASK cards. Each card has an interview question and a tip for how to answer it. Players take turns asking and answering questions. After one player answers, other players share what they liked about the answer and provide additional ideas for how to respond to the question. The idea is to familiarize players with the types of questions that might be asked, get practice answering, crowdsource constructive feedback, and generate ideas from multiple players about how to answer each question.

The game also has HINT cards that provide more tips on how to engage in interviews. One card mentions the S.T.A.R. method - Situation, Task, Action, Result - as a way of structuring your answers. Here’s a video from Dr. Ariel Leslie that explains the S.T.A.R. method.

While creating the game and thinking about our own interview experiences, we realized that some questions we and others have been asked are illegal. These questions should not be asked. Often they are illegal because they probe for information that the interviewee has a legal right not to disclose.

We also learned that some interviewees are asked these questions more than others. For example, when I asked a large room of people at a math conference if they had been asked an illegal question during an interview, few of the men raised their hands, but almost all women and people of color did. This surprised me. At the time I thought everyone got asked these questions. But I learned that if an interviewer does not focus on your age, citizenship, parental status, or other characteristics as relevant to your job performance, then they likely won’t ask about them. If they do think those characteristics are relevant, then they still should not ask. They are breaking the law. 

Sometimes interviewers innocently ask questions because they are trying to be helpful. (Do you need childcare? Do you have a partner who needs to find a job here?). They are still breaking the law.  

So we included a new twist in the game: both legal and illegal ASK questions, with tips about how to answer each question, whether it is legal or not. For the illegal questions, finding a good answer often involves pivoting the conversation back to your interest and qualifications for the job. 

The reality is that whether or not you get asked illegal questions, the interviewers may judge you based on irrelevant characteristics and invalid assumptions. But the more you can focus the interview on the assets you will bring to the organization, the better. Practicing how to handle interview questions and answer them to your advantage builds a crucial part of your toolkit as an applicant!