I don’t know many businesses that would be able to survive a $2.8M EEOC settlement for bad hiring practices. Would yours?

That’s what happened to Target a few weeks ago. Luckily they will survive and eventually fix the issues they had using pre-hire assessments. You see the EEOC found the tests were not sufficiently job-related and consistent with business necessity and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

What this means is that many qualified people in protected classes were not hired into exempt positions at Target. Setting aside the issue of not using a validated pre-hire assessment that does not cause adverse impact; both parties lost in a BIG way here. Target didn’t hire some people that could very well have been super stars for their organization. And because someone chose to let some rogue managers use assessments that were not validated and EEOC complaint it cost the company in two ways; the settlement and people.

If you don’t want to make the same mistake that Target did follow these simple steps:

• Benchmark any job you plan to hire people to fill (read ALL jobs should have a job benchmark for your organization) At this time you should also set other criteria such as experience needed for the role, etc. 
• Use a validated EEOC, OFCCP compliant pre-hire assessment like the ones we use with our clients to assess your candidates against your job benchmark 
• Train any and all employees that will be interviewing on how to conduct a behavioral interview. Then actually implement behavioral interviewing as part of your interview process
• Conduct background checks
• Make offers to the individuals best qualified knowing you have just gone through a compliant hiring process

Having a hiring process that is good for all parties’ means your company won’t get sideways with the law and your organization is more likely to hire people that may help the organization grow and thrive in ways it would not have otherwise. 

Not sure how to set your process up to get the best hires? Contact us, we are experts in helping companies alleviate hiring issues and remedy the problems caused by the employee too valuable to fire.