The U.S. government has finalized a new set of hiring guidelines for all federal contractors, including colleges and universities, which specify how an "applicant" is to be defined in the hiring process.
According to the Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the new guidelines are necessary because of the advent and heavy usage of the online job market created by the commercial and internal resume databanks and employer Web sites on the Internet. The guidelines, which were announced Friday, will go into effect Feb. 6 next year.
The new methods of conducting the hiring process through Internet resources has complicated the applicant record-keeping process that is required by the U.S. government to insure that federal contractors meet certain demographic requirements in their applicant pool, according to the OFCCP.
The online job market makes it possible for employers to have thousands of applicants, meaning that they would potentially have to ask all of these applicants for demographic information such as gender, race, ethnicity and marital status. As a result, the OFCCP has had great difficulty in determining whether discrimination exists in a contractor's selection process.
The new hiring guidelines, intended to aid the OFCCP in enforcing non-discriminatory hiring practices, define an "internet applicant" in the following way: The individual expresses an interest in employment by means of the internet of other related data processing technologies; the contractor considers the individual for employment; the individual possesses basic objective qualifications for the position; the individual does not withdraw themselves from the application process before receiving an offer from the employer, according to the OFCCP.
Despite the more specific nature of the new hiring guidelines required of Internet applications, the University will have few problems meeting these requirements by early next year, Equal Opportunity Programs Director Darlene Scott-Scurry said.
The University already applies guidelines similar to those set forth by the Department of Labor, Scott-Scurry said.
The EOP conducts rigorous training programs for all of the hiring officials and search committees in the University that work to narrow down a list of applicants to find the most qualified individual, University spokesperson Carol Wood said.
"We assist the search committees in designing a plan for employment that is broad and diverse, and we help provide a list of strategies to the search committees to help diversify their [applicant] pools," Scott-Scurry said.
These training programs are mandated by University President John T. Casteen III, she said.
Voluntary forms asking for demographic information are sent out to all potential job candidates, so the University can keep record of its applicant pool demographics, Scott-Scurry said.
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