Your recruitment process plays a key role in your ability to attract and retain qualified candidates. However, getting recruitment right isn’t just about enhancing your employer brand or achieving strategic goals. It’s also about aligning your practices with regulatory requirements.
Recruitment compliance not only contributes to a great candidate experience but can also help you avoid lawsuits, investigations, and fines from candidates, employees, and government agencies.
Here’s how you can use training, structured interview processes, and regular audits to create a fair and inclusive environment for candidates and employees while ensuring adherence to the law.
Familiarize Yourself With Key Discrimination Laws
Before you can assess recruitment compliance, you need a keen understanding of the discrimination laws that govern your practice as an HR or business leader. Some important legislation to be aware of includes:
- Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
- The Pregnancy Discrimination Act: Prohibits discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions
- The Equal Pay Act: Prohibits sex-based wage discrimination among those doing substantially similar work in the same establishment
- The Americans With Disabilities Act: Prohibits discrimination against and guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities
- The Age Discrimination in Employment Act: Prohibits age-based discrimination against individuals 40 and over
- The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act: Prohibits discrimination based on genetic information, such as genetic test results or family medical history
Though these laws represent federal legislation, it’s also important to remember that most states have their own anti-discrimination laws that provide further protection or require specific actions from employers. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the legal landscape at every level.
Train Managers and Interviewers
In some cases, practices that seem benign can actually be discriminatory under the law. For example, interviewers looking to learn more about a candidate may ask questions about childcare arrangements, religious affiliations, or when they graduated from college. Unfortunately, all of these questions can lead to discriminatory behavior.
Consequently, it’s vital to train managers and interviewers to avoid questions that might be inappropriate under the law. You may also want to provide education on unconscious bias, as this will help your team become aware of any automatic assumptions or stereotypes that could inadvertently influence hiring decisions.
Furthermore, it’s important to make training sessions a regular requirement. This will ensure that managers understand what constitutes discriminatory behavior and remind them of the critical nature of avoiding biased decision-making in the hiring process.
Audit All Recruitment Practices
It’s a good idea to regularly audit your recruitment practices to confirm that they’re compliant with anti-discrimination laws. Before you conduct your audit, clearly outline the areas you want to focus on for recruitment compliance, which may include:
- Job postings
- Application processes and questions
- Interview questions
- Background checks
- Candidate deliberation processes
- Anti-discrimination policies
Check your processes and language in each area to make sure they align with regulatory requirements.
You might also consider tracking key performance metrics, such as diversity hiring rates, demographic-based pass-through rates, and quality of hire. Though these may not directly reveal outright discrimination, they can signal areas where further review is warranted.
As you retool your policies and procedures, make sure all hiring staff, including interviewers and department heads, are aware of the changes you’ve made and how they align with non-discrimination requirements.
Addressing Algorithmic Bias
According to data from Gartner, 34% of HR leaders are exploring use cases and opportunities to implement generative AI tools in their work. If this includes you, you must be wary of introducing algorithmic bias into your hiring practice.
This can happen when AI-driven systems produce unfair or discriminatory results based on faulty data or training. If left unchecked, such a scenario could lead to your company unintentionally favoring certain groups of candidates based on historical data, potentially leading to poor or non-compliant outcomes.
To avoid issues with recruitment compliance when using AI tools, make it a point to work only with reputable vendors who conduct regular audits on their own software and are committed to integrity in following the law.
It’s also prudent to conduct regular audits of your own AI systems, focusing on providing diverse datasets for training and transparency in how AI decisions are made.
Develop a Structured Interview Process
Structured interview processes are standardized to give all candidates a fair chance at landing a given role. Your interviews should include the same set and sequence of questions and skill tests for all candidates.
You might also consider using scorecards to standardize your evaluation criteria and reduce the chances of unconscious bias influencing your decisions. Stick to job-related criteria when assessing candidates rather than relying on subjective judgments, as this will further promote recruitment compliance.
Understand Best Practices for Candidate Interviews
As you interview candidates, it can be helpful to keep a few specific “dos” and “don’ts” in mind:
Do:
- Stick to unbiased, job-related questions and evaluation criteria
- Document and standardize the interview process
- Ensure that interviewers focus on candidate qualifications, not personal traits
Don’t:
- Ask about personal matters, such as age or family status
- Allow interviewers to make decisions based on gut feelings
- Allow managers to skip crucial anti-discrimination and unconscious bias training
Adhering to these best practices can keep your company out of hot water and help you establish and maintain fair hiring practices.
Careful Attention to Compliance Creates a Positive and Inclusive Hiring Process
Some 34% of today’s candidates report having experienced discrimination in interview and hiring practices. VirgilHR can help you stay up to date on regulatory requirements so you can properly audit your hiring practices.
Schedule a demo today to see for yourself how our automated platform can deliver the information and assistance you need to build a compliant and inclusive process for all candidates.
Sources:
1.https://www.eeoc.gov/fact-sheet/federal-laws-prohibiting-job-discrimination-questions-and-answers
2. https://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/topics/artificial-intelligence-in-hr
