when an interviewer wants to talk to the candidate’s wife

[ResidentialBusiness]

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

My father-in-law was visiting over the weekend. He started talking about how my brother-in-law is job-hunting to escape new company ownership.

At one of my brother-in-law’s interviews, the employer asked to talk to his wife (my sister-in-law, who isn’t employed and cares for my three young nephews).

I was so surprised that I exclaimed, “They can’t do that!” Well, I guess my comment offended my father-in-law because he raised his voice and said back, “What do you mean they can’t do that?!”

I said what if the candidate was a single mom with kids? My father-in-law snapped at me, saying the employer wants to make sure that my brother-in-law’s wife “is on board.” (He missed my point that not everyone who works is a married man.) I dropped the conversation and said nothing more after that, because it wasn’t worth fighting over it in front of my daughter and husband.

So now I’m wondering, is it okay for an employer to ask to talk to “The Wife” before hiring? It seems very outdated to me. It’s like they want to know that she will agree to provide free childcare so my brother-in-law can work as many hours as the company wants.

It’s a very retro and outdated practice.

And I’d love to know whether they’re asking to talk to female candidates’ husbands, because I bet they’re not.

Some years back, I had an interesting conversation with Suzanne Lucas of Evil HR Lady about companies that ask to meet the whole family before offering a job that would involve moving to a new country (something Suzanne herself has done; she and her kids moved to Switzerland when her husband took a job there). She made a good argument for why it makes sense in that situation — the job won’t work out if the family is unhappy in the new country / doesn’t want to move — but that’s very different than interviewing for a job locally.

My guess is that the explanation is one of the following:

* Your brother-in-law is interviewing for a high-up executive role where his spouse will be expected to play more of a role in his career and/or the company is more-than-usually invested in the character of the executives they hire and think meeting his spouse will give them insight into whether they’d be comfortable having him as representing their company.

* The role is relatively senior and they want to make sure his spouse is on-board with what the demands of the role are expected to be. (Typically this is something that the company would convey to the candidate and let the candidate talk with their spouse about, but again — retro.)

* The company thinks of themselves as “family-oriented” and this is part of that.

In any case, it’s pretty weird, and your father-in-law sounds like a difficult in-law (not because he doesn’t find it weird, but because he took it personally to the point of snapping at you about it).

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