Before you reject a candidate who appears to meet the basic requirements for an open position, make sure you can explain your decision. Then document your rationale in case he or she later claims the real reason for the rejection was some form of discrimination.

Q. Our company has just made a job offer to a highly qualified man to work in our company’s IT department. During the final stages of our interviewing process, the candidate told us that “she” is transgendered —that she would be transitioning from male to female. We believe employing a transgender employee could be very disruptive and cause a morale problem in the company. Can we rescind the offer based on the candidate’s transgender status?

It is an unwritten rule in polite society that anyone who feels compelled to guess a person’s age should always guess down. That’s why it’s hard to sympathize with Joseph Kestenbaum, an investor with Unitek USA, a Blue Bell communications firm, who reportedly asked a 55-year-old applicant seeking an HR director’s position, “How old are you, 78?” ...

Q. What questions are off-limits on an employment application or when conducting a job interview? ...

Billboards, breakfast and foot massages .... As the job market tightens, job seekers are becoming more creative in their efforts to attract the attention of potential employers. In fact, 12% of hiring managers surveyed by CareerBuilder.com reported that they are seeing more job seekers try unusual antics to capture their attention.

HR can never know for sure exactly what’s going on in other parts of the organization. That means it’s easy to be blindsided by a sudden lawsuit. For example, co-workers sometimes spread unfounded rumors about who is up for promotion and who will be bypassed. Such gossip may give some employees an excuse to find a reason to sue ...

Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful to refuse to hire or recruit someone because of “religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight or marital status.” But applicants sometimes provide that information on their résumés. Have someone take those résumés and black out any information that hints at any of those protected categories.

Interview questions come in all flavors. Sometimes they’re straightforward, sometimes they're tricky and sometimes they’re just plain weird—“If you were an animal, what kind would you be?” But the best interview questions focus on what applicants know how to do. Here are 20 questions you can use to elicit the information you need to pick the right person for the job.

Want to avoid needless lawsuits from disgruntled applicants? Adopt some basic rules for handling the selection process, and pay special attention to the all-important job description and interview. As the following case shows, employers that follow some simple rules probably won’t lose a hiring discrimination lawsuit ...

Q. Can we ask female applicants about lengthy gaps in their employment histories? I’m afraid that doing so might make it look as though we are digging into personal or family issues that could lead to a claim of gender bias ...

When employer labor budgets are stretched thin and raises are tough to come by, employees begin to see promotions as the only way to get a significant pay raise. It should come as no surprise then if litigation over missed opportunities and pay raises increases. Here’s what you can do to protect your organization from failure-to-promote lawsuits ...

The EEOC recently filed a lawsuit against the Champion National Security Firm in Richardson, alleging the Texas company did not hire a Sikh who refused to shave his beard and remove his turban. The EEOC is seeking punitive damages, back pay and compensation for pain and suffering caused to Sukhdev Singh Brar ...

The U.S. Department of Justice and the EEOC have filed a complaint to enforce a mediation settlement agreement the EEOC entered into with the Housing Authority of the city of El Paso  ...