50 free HR trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free HR trivia questions with answers. Most HR trivia questions found online are either about your own company or about nothing at all. These forty are about the working world itself, which makes them usable in any office. There is an employment law round - the 1938 act that created the minimum wage, the leave law vetoed twice before it passed, the 1970 statute that finally made safety cheaper than replacement - and a workplace history round covering the man who designed the cubicle, the lighting experiment that produced the Hawthorne effect, the letter Leonardo da Vinci sent to a prospective employer, and the naturalist who first put wheels on a chair. Every answer is written against a sourced account with the sentence that establishes it attached, so nobody has to argue with the quizmaster. Print it for a team meeting, an onboarding session, or the last twenty minutes of an away day.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1938 law created the American right to a minimum wage?
The Fair Labor Standards Act
It also introduced time-and-a-half overtime and banned oppressive child labour.
Q 02After how many hours a week does that law require overtime pay?
Forty
The rate is time-and-a-half, and the same statute prohibits oppressive child labour.
Q 03What federal minimum wage took effect in the US in July 2009?
$7.25 an hour
It was the last step of a 2007 law; states are free to set a higher rate, and many have, which is why the federal floor rarely bites.
Q 04On which day is American Labor Day held?
The first Monday of September
Canada marks its Labour Day on the same day; most other countries use 1 May.
Q 05In which year did Labor Day become a federal holiday?
1894
By then thirty states were already marking it officially.
Q 06Which two groups promoted the original American holiday for workers?
The Central Labor Union and Knights of Labor
The first parade went through New York City on 5 September 1882.
Q 07How many other countries mark International Workers' Day on 1 May instead?
More than 150
That date was chosen to commemorate the American strike that led to the Haymarket affair in Chicago.
Q 08Which Chicago event does May Day commemorate?
The Haymarket affair
The Second International picked the date to mark the general strike that led up to it.
Q 09How much leave does the Family and Medical Leave Act guarantee?
12 unpaid work weeks
It covers a new child, a seriously ill family member, or the employee's own serious illness.
Q 10Which president signed that leave law in February 1993?
Bill Clinton
His predecessor had vetoed a version of it twice before the 1992 election.
Q 11What happened to earlier versions of that leave bill?
They were vetoed twice
George H. W. Bush blocked them before losing the 1992 election.
Q 12Which arm of the Labor Department administers that leave law?
The Wage and Hour Division
Elected officials and highly compensated employees face exclusions or limits under it.
Q 13Which 2019 amendment gave government workers twelve weeks off on full pay for a new child?
The Federal Employee Paid Leave Act
Q 21In which year was the term 'Hawthorne effect' coined?
1953
John R. P. French named it two decades after the studies themselves ended.
Q 22Who is sometimes credited with writing the first résumé?
Leonardo da Vinci
It was really a letter of about 1482 to a prospective employer, Ludovico Sforza.
Q 23From which language does the word 'résumé' come?
French
It means, straightforwardly, to summarise.
Q 24What is the standard document called in Europe and Asia?
It came through the defence authorisation bill and applied from October 2020.
Q 14Who designed the office cubicle?
Robert Propst
He built it for the furniture company Herman Miller and released it in 1967.
Q 15What name did that design carry when it was released in 1967?
Action Office II
The first version, Action Office I, was a commercial failure.
Q 16Why was that design originally seen as an improvement?
It gave more privacy than open desk rows
Before it, most offices were rows of desks in an open room with no separation at all.
Q 17Who won an award for the failed first version of that design, without crediting his colleague?
George Nelson
Propst went back and designed the version that actually sold.
Q 18What does the Hawthorne effect describe?
People changing behaviour when observed
It came out of lighting experiments at a Western Electric plant outside Chicago.
Q 19What were the original Hawthorne studies actually testing?
Lighting levels
The conclusion that brighter light raised productivity turned out to be false.
Q 20Where was the factory that gave the effect its name?
Cicero, Illinois
The workers there made electrical relays for Western Electric.
A curriculum vitae
The international version is closer to a résumé than to the long academic CV used in American universities.
Q 25What does a reverse chronological résumé put first?
The most recent job
It is the default format precisely because recruiters read the top third and stop.
Q 26What distinguishes a structured job interview?
Every applicant gets the same questions
Unstructured interviews are informal conversations, and they predict performance far less reliably.
Q 27Who first coined the term 'human resource'?
John R. Commons
The labour economist used it in 1893, decades before HR became a distinct profession.
Q 28Which two industrial-era thinkers laid the groundwork for the HR field?
Robert Owen and Charles Babbage
Both argued that a business could not survive without healthy, well-treated workers.
Q 29What did Frederick Winslow Taylor call his approach to work efficiency?
Scientific management
It is often called Taylorism, and it shaped early twentieth-century personnel practice.
Q 30What was published for the first time in 1922?
The Journal of Personnel Research
It was a joint effort by the National Research Council and the Engineering Foundation.