This week a lot of information has come out about some EEOC/OFCCP updates as well as Employment law suits based on the the use of pre-employment assessment tools. I am going to try to break down the information in an easy format so you get what you need to keep yourself and your company out of trouble.

BEFORE you start to think about filling your open positions it’s critical that you have a standardized hiring process in place. Ideally this would be a scalable process because after all, your company is going to grow, right? Take a look at the steps I have outlined below. These will help you get started and stay out of hot water.

Benchmark your jobs. In addition to the must have (specific degree, specific language needed, etc) you must determine key accountabilities for each role. The key accountabilities are what you plan to hold the new hire accountable for in the coming year.

Pre-Screen. Interview the identified candidates with the right job skills. Its highly recommended that you standardize the questions for this first interview. If the candidate meets these requirements move them to step #3.

Pre-employment Assessment OR Office Interview. You have a choice here. Since you have completed a job benchmark and have the key accountabilities for the role, you can 1) have the now applicant take a (validated for hiring) Pre-employment assessment and if they are a match with the benchmark bring them in for a 2nd interview. OR 2) you can interview them face to face THEN have them take the Pre-employment assessment. (I vote for assessing first then you don’t have to burn your people’s time bringing them in for an office visit because you know they already don’t match the key accountabilities)
Final interviews will take place then you’ll complete reference checking and any background checking process you already have in place.

Final thoughts:
The key items here are making sure you treat everyone that applies to your company consistently and follow the same process for every individual. You must also use Pre-employment assessments that have been validated for hiring. AND when you evaluate your applicants for each position, you must use a standardized consistent hiring and interview process across the board.

Companies get in trouble when they arbitrarily assign qualifications to a position that are not job related for the position. Don’t beleive me? You can check out a recent article by Dr. Charles Handler of Rocket Hire called Busted A Decade’s Worth of Data on EEOC/OFCCP Action on Assessments & Selection in a recent post on ERE.net.