A group of faculty took me out to the interview dinner after the talk I gave during a job interview in 2004. The Dean's wife, R, sat next to me. I was meeting her for the first time. R told me some interesting stories about her family, and her complicated relationship with her sister. But things got complicated for me when R persisted in asking me increasingly personal questions.
I've been asked overly personal questions many times at job interviews. How to deal with it is always a challenge.
When I was a grad student, Princeton convened a meeting so that female faculty could give advice to female grad students, to prepare us for being treated differently from our male counterparts during our job searches. They told us that women are asked a lot of "illegal questions" at job interviews ("Are you married?" "Do you have children?"), and there's always the dilemma of what to do. They pointed out that we could refuse to answer, but then we probably wouldn't get the job. They recommended answering truthfully (and hoping one could change the culture someday).
Several times I tried to change the subject, but R was insistent. I started out answering truthfully some of her questions about my relationship with my siblings, much as we were advised. But the questions got more and more personal, and I felt more and more uncomfortable. This wasn't the sort of conversation I would normally have with a stranger, or in the hearing of faculty who were interviewing me for a job. I didn't want to hurt my chances of getting a job offer by offending the Dean's wife, but finally I said in as polite a voice as I could muster that since it was a job interview, I didn't feel completely comfortable with personal questions such as these.
She was very upset, and loudly told me so. I don't know how many faculty had been paying attention to our conversation, but now they all were. So much for trying to make a good impression!
Over the years, universities have gotten better at training hiring committees on best practices for hiring, including not asking "illegal questions". But they don't train spouses of faculty members. (Some do suggest that non-faculty spouses not be involved in job interviews.) And they don't always train hiring committees, Deans, or Chairs to step in when someone else asks the "illegal questions".