Given the uncomfortably precarious nature of the economy in past years and the effect this has had on the job market, it should come as no surprise that many companies have begun taking their hiring processes to new lengths in the hope of guaranteeing the quality of individuals that they hire. However, some employers have begun to take these efforts just a bit too far and are now toeing the line between good, methodical hiring practices, and ones which are counterintuitive to their purpose and may both turn candidates away as well as put the organization in legal trouble. In order to help companies learn to keep themselves in check, executive search firms have put together a list of those most unfavorable of new hiring procedures here.
1. Overlooking the Unemployed
It has become all too common practice in recent years for employers to state outright that the unemployed need not apply, or to simply cast aside the applications of these individuals. What’s more, the longer a candidate has been unemployed the more they are scorned by the employer. While it is certainly good practice for companies to seek individuals who are currently employed, doing so to the extent that all other are automatically rejected is both discriminatory and may impact certain demographics of workers far greater than others. To counteract this unfair trend certain governmental bodies which have begun to take notice of the situation are now seeking to implement new rules and regulations to put a stop to it.
2. Conducting Credit Checks
Many companies have also taken on the bad habit in recent years, of hiring our to credit reporting organizations in order to conduct credit checks of each of their more serious candidates. So far no studies have yet been brought to light which demonstrate that those individuals with good credit make good employees, and vice versa, particularly given the damaging effects of the economy on so many individuals in recent years. While many states have begun to step up and pass laws banning this issue, the Society for Human Resource Management yet reports that over half of all organizations perform employment-based credit checks on some if not all their employees.
3. Requesting Social Security Numbers
While it is relevant that individuals should have to give their social security number to an employer for tax and IRS regulations once they have been hired, many companies have begun jumping the gun on this subject and asking for their candidates SSNs well before it should have become an issue. This is simply bad practice as it significantly increases the risk of identity theft for job candidates. From the candidate’s perspective, having perhaps filled out dozens of applications with many of them requesting such sensitive information, the level of risk here in an already high risk environment – once of the most commonplace locales for cases of identity theft is in the workplace – to a new high.
4. Demanding Social Media Profiles
Finally, far too many companies in the last couple years, during their executive search and hiring procedures, have begun demanding that candidates turnover the login information to their private social media networking accounts so that they may snoop into these individual’s online profiles as an assessment tool. Unsurprisingly, companies who make such demands are now being sued by some social media sites such as Facebook, as making such a demand is in clear violation of the contract entered into by the individual in possession of the account, and other legal issues.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
