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Audit Your Recruitment Process Marketing Content to Delight Job Seekers

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Use this audit checklist to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of your recruiting process-related content.

I’m not the first one to say that recruiters, human resources professionals and marketing specialists should team up to create content that engages top talent in your recruitment process. However, how many of you have actively engaged in measuring the impact of that HR/marketing “bestie” partnership?

If you don’t have a benchmark from which to grow, your organization will have a tough time figuring out which recruiting content is worth the investment of time and money.

Maximize the effectiveness of your recruiting content with a periodic audit of your hiring process-related promotional assets. Establishing KPIs for content will make it easy to quickly identify existing content gems, as well as guide you in developing additional content that will resonate.

Auditing your recruitment content is as easy as 1-2-3

Let’s examine the audit process and recap with a free recruitment process marketing content scorecard.

1 – Determine your recruitment content audit’s focus

You can’t decide if you’re investing your time and resources to produce recruitment content wisely until you settle on the scope of your audit.

Don’t sweat it if you can’t tackle a comprehensive audit in your first attempt. If you can–great–though it will depend on your recruiting volume and what you’ve previously tackled in terms of content analysis.

It’s okay to segment an otherwise comprehensive audit into smaller sub-audits–just have an overall plan in place for which audit type should be attempted first.

Potential content audit focuses:

  • Employment brand quality: consider whether your recruitment content is well written, and whether it aligns with what you’ve defined as your organizational employment brand.
  • Hiring process stage: analyze whether a specific hiring process stage is addressed in each of your content assets, and if job seeker questions characteristic of that stage are answered by the content.
  • Job board optimization and search engine optimization (SEO): review your job listing rankings on third party job boards and recruitment content performance on external search engines to identify improvements that will create better digital awareness for your employment opportunities.
  • Content compliance: examine whether your content meets any industry- and/or government-related compliance requirements for your organization, including an analysis of your career content’s ability to attract a diverse set of job candidates.

2 – Settle on your audit evaluation factors

Your recruiting content evaluation process will be based on the type of audit you select. The audit factors must be easily measurable and align to your project scope.

Because this audit is a wonderful opportunity to connect the human resources and marketing teams in your company, ask the project champions from each of those departments to determine the ideal recruiting content audit criteria.

If we select a hiring process stage audit as an example, then HR and marketing might jointly evaluate factors like the content’s

  • alignment with overall employment brand,
  • specific hiring stage focus (e.g. awareness, consideration, conversion, retention and advocacy),
  • attempt to answer stage-appropriate job seeker questions,
  • call-to-action for the next step in the hiring process,
  • current distribution and promotion method by stage type, and
  • likelihood of being easily utilized by hiring stage stakeholders

As you prepare for an audit, you should also plan your intended project deliverables. Aside from a quantitative score for each recruitment content asset, deliverables can include other action steps to enhance content quality.

Potential hiring process stage content audit deliverables:

  • Documentation of all current content assets by hiring stage
  • Content gap analysis for certain hiring process stages
  • List of questions that individual content assets should answer at each hiring process stage
  • Action steps for your content library – content to retain, revise, create or expire
  • Template for creating content for each hiring process stage
  • Distribution strategy for each asset based on hiring process stage and content type (e.g. owned media such as your own career site, earned media such as a guest blog placement on an industry website, or paid media such as a sponsored job listing on a job board)

3 – Rank your recruiting process content

After you’ve married the appropriate content criteria with each asset, you’re ready to score your recruitment process content!

Please recognize that some things can be quantitatively evaluated (e.g. how many out of X job seeker questions are answered?) while others are subjective (e.g. does the narrative’s language support our employment brand initiatives?).

Now’s your chance to create your own evaluation form to standardize your existing and future recruitment content.

Need some help designing your employer’s scoring process? ExactHire created this recruitment process content scorecard to help you hit the ground running.

 

ExactHire Recruitment Process Content Scorecard

Recommendations that resonate

Your audit data is chock full of ideas on where you can start making an immediate impact on your recruitment process marketing. Best of all, it’s backed by a standardized content scorecard.

Use your scorecard analysis to spot trends. Does one aspect of your hiring process consistently fall short? Could others help implement some of the action steps due to their expertise in one stage of the process?

Backed by your audit data, you’re on your way to constructing a high-level recruitment process content strategy that will reinforce your employment brand and help convert more new hires.

Streamline Your Candidate Feedback Process

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Many of our clients wrestle with the issue of how much access to allow hiring managers during the candidate recruiting cycle. In particular, one of the concerns most frequently cited is the potential for managers to log candidate notes that may be (intentionally or unintentionally) inappropriate or discriminatory. This creates potential exposure for the organization. At the same time, taking away the ability for managers to input notes or other candidate feedback creates additional workload for the HR or recruiting team.

One feature within our platform that helps resolve this dilemma is our HR Data Survey option. In short, this feature allows clients to design customized questionnaires that may be completed by one or more system users during the hiring process.

We see these surveys used most frequently to gather feedback about candidates at one or more points along the hiring journey. Examples include after a phone screen, after an initial interview, or following a group interview. In each case, however, clients now have the ability to fully control what type of feedback they choose to solicit, which can significantly reduce (or eliminate) the potential for managers to submit inappropriate notes.

When designing a survey, clients have the ability to score/weight responses from system users. They may also opt to have more than one survey to account for different types of positions or different system user perspectives within the hiring process. In addition, when viewing the survey results for a particular candidate, those users who are permitted access may see each of the individual surveys completed for that candidate.

This tends to be an excellent way to see multiple sets of feedback in a single view.

Sample Candidate Feedback Questionnaire For Interviews

hr-data-survey-sample

Best of all, this feature is available to all clients as a standard part of the HireCentric offering. And for current clients who would like to further explore ways to streamline the candidate feedback process, please email our support team (support@exacthire.com) for additional information and instructions.

Photo Credit: Alan Levine

Can I Check the Status of My Employment Application? [VIDEO]

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In this age of instant gratification, it’s natural for job applicants to want uber-prompt attention when it comes to knowing whether the employment application they submitted for your company’s position has made it through your screening process. And, even if you pride yourself on being ultra communicative to applicants regarding their fate in your hiring process, it never hurts to make additional strides in the proactive communication category.

In this ExactHire vlog, listen to Jessica Stephenson explain how you can introduce an element of applicant self-service by enabling candidates to check on the status of an employment application by logging into their profile provided by your HireCentric applicant tracking system.

ExactHire Vlog Applicant Status Codes

Video Transcript:

When it comes to screening employment applications, how long is your applicant status code list? Especially if you’re subject to compliance reporting, the list can get very long and specific. For example, noting the exact reasons why each candidate fails to meet minimum basic qualifications…experience, education, etc.

And, while you would want that level of detail for your internal status assignments, you wouldn’t need to share that with candidates externally.

What if you could introduce a self-service component that allows applicants to log into their profile and check on the status of their own job application? Well, you can…and the best part…you get to choose the public-facing label for each of your internal status codes. So, what you know as “Not Selected–Basic Qualifications–Experience” would simply show up as “Not Selected” to the candidate externally.

But think about the positive application of that feature…for what you use as “Sent to Hiring Manager” internally, you could more strategically rename that status code “Screened by HR–Sent to Hiring Manager” to serve as a positive reinforcement to candidates that would otherwise disengage without prompt feedback about their employment application. This tool can be a competitive advantage in this age of immediate feedback…as long as you screen your applications promptly.

If you’re interested in turning on this feature, the ExactHire Client Services team would love to help you. Please email them at support@exacthire.com. Once enabled, Admin users will see a new field when adding or editing status codes called “Status Shown to Applicants.” Likewise, candidates, once they’ve logged into their HireCentric profile, will see a public-facing version of your internal status codes assigned to them.

Thanks, and have a great day!

Oregon Ban The Box Legislation

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As we approach the final quarter of 2015, it is never too early to start preparing for new legislation that will affect hiring practices in 2016.  Effective January 1, 2016, Oregon will become the newest state to implement “Ban the Box” legislation for both public and private sector employment.  Other states that have already enacted this practice in both public and private sector employment are Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Hawaii and New Jersey.

Oregon governor, Kate Brown, signed House Bill 3025 on June 26, 2015.  This law, H.B. 3025, will take effect on January 1, 2016 and prohibits an employer from requiring an applicant to disclose a criminal conviction on an employment application or prior to an interview.  If an employer does not conduct an interview, the employer is prohibited from requiring an applicant to disclose a criminal conviction prior to a conditional offer.  

Employers are able to notify applicants that they will later be required to disclose convictions or that a criminal background check will be conducted as part of the hiring process.  This legislation does include the caveat that an employer may still consider convictions when making hiring decisions.  For additional information on what this legislation includes, visit the Oregon State Legislature and The National Law Review.  

Upcoming “Ban the Box” Legislation

To keep abreast of states and cities who enact “Ban the Box” legislation, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) has an interactive map that provides an overview of the current legislative status.  For the actual legislation, you will need to go directly to the state or city government website to access the passed law(s) in its comprehensive language.

Employers need to be aware of the legislation that exists and what legislation is pending to be prepared for the potential impact on their organizations.  If your organization currently has hiring practices in multiple states and cities, or posts job listings nationally, it is important to be cognizant of the locales’ legal expectations and determine if you need to alter verbiage on your employment application(s) and/or change specific steps in your hiring practices to be compliant with “Ban the Box” legislation.

Please note:  The ExactHire team is not legal counsel, and we do not offer legal advice, so any questions regarding your company’s eligibility for exemption with the “Ban the Box” legislation and/or proper verbiage for your company’s employment application(s) should be discussed with your company’s legal counsel.  To learn specifically how Oregon’s H.B. 3025 affects your organization’s hiring practices, please contact your company’s legal team.

ExactHire Clients

At ExactHire, we take pride in doing our best to ensure our clients’ satisfaction is the highest possible. We do whatever we can to resolve clients’ current needs and identify potential needs.  After you speak with your legal counsel, and if you and your legal team decide changes need to be made to your employment application(s) to comply with legislation, the ExactHire team can work with you to create a new application with the verbiage you specify for compliance.  Also, please know that one of the benefits of using ExactHire’s HireCentric software as your applicant tracking system is that you can create multiple employment applications, each specific to your needs.  If you’re an existing client looking for more information about updating your current employment application(s) and/or creating additional employment applications, please email support@exacthire.com, and let us know your needs.

Learn More About ExactHire Solutions

If you are not yet an ExactHire client, for more information about HireCentric ATS, please visit our resources page or contact us today.

What is an Applicant Flow Log? – Whiteboard [VIDEO]

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If your growing organization is accepting federal contracts or subcontracts for the first time and you are unsure about compliance regulations that may now be applicable to your business, then this Whiteboard Chat is for you. In this video, Jeff Hallam, explains the purpose of an applicant flow log report, and comments on which organizations must prepare one in order to be compliant with Affirmative Action regulations enforced by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).

Video Transcript:

Hi today we’re going to talk about what is an applicant flow log. An applicant flow log is a report that’s generated annually, and it’s used by organizations that are required, from an Affirmative Action perspective, to make sure that they are not discriminating against candidates for any illegal reasons. And all of this is subject under the umbrella of Affirmative Action, which applies typically to organizations, either directly through contracts, or indirectly through subcontracts, of certain amounts that are doing business with the federal government. And when you look at what we’re going to talk about today, you’ll notice right away there’s quite an alphabet soup of acronyms that are going to be used when you talk about Affirmative Action.

But we’re trying to simplify this a little bit and understand this isn’t meant to be a full explanation on Affirmative Action, but at least a way to help you make sure that you understand whether your organization might be perhaps subject to this, and if so, what are some key things that you need to be made aware of.

So, some of the players when you talk about an applicant flow log and Affirmative Action…all of this is administered and governed under the auspices of the OFCCP, otherwise known as the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. And this is an offshoot of the Department of Labor, so as you would expect, all of this falls ultimately under the Department of Labor as to whether organizations are being compliant. There are a couple of recent updates that have been passed along with Affirmative Action just as of the last year or so that expanded the pools of applicants through which discrimination has to be tested.

One of those, the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act, or VEVRAA, applies to people who have been in the service, making sure that organizations aren’t discriminating against them. Likewise, Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act applies to organizations, or individuals rather, who may have certain types of disabilities. And again, making sure that those folks aren’t being discriminated against. So when you look at an applicant flow log, understanding some of these basics in simplest terms, these items in this box here are what an applicant flow log is designed to track during the course of a year. So they’re very specific requirements that from an Affirmative Action perspective must be met to make sure that, again that discrimination isn’t taking place.

So what an applicant flow log will track per job are these items here…so the name of each candidate, the date that they applied, their race, their gender, veteran status, disability status and then disposition. And there could be a couple of other things here and there that your administrator may request, but these are typically the core things that have to be there for any applicant flow log report. And when you talk about disposition sometimes that can be a little confusing to people. What disposition really looks at is what did we do with a candidate? And there are, again, some key components to that. So when we say what did we do with them, meaning what ultimately did we decide to do from a hiring perspective. Did we hire them? If not, why not? When did we make that determination? And then who was it within the organization who made that determination?

So there have to be very specific things that are tracked along the way so that when it comes time to provide this applicant flow log report for your Affirmative Action purposes, all of these given data elements are there. So, as to tracking these elements, there are a couple of core ways that most organizations may do this. So if you work with job boards, or you accept email resumes, then typically you are going to have to find a mechanism usually in the form of an online document, or something that you’re going to have to email candidates, that allows them to voluntarily provide this information because it does have to be requested of each candidate. They have the option as to whether they want to disclose any of this information, but you have to have a record of the fact that you made it available to them.

Likewise, the other option, where more organizations seem to be headed is, if they are using an applicant tracking tool that will automate much of this, that can simplify things dramatically. Now, as candidates apply or indicate interest in the job, that information is offered to them right up front, it can be escrowed and held separately from the rest of the application, so that when it does come time to produce this applicant flow log information at the end of the year, that information is already there, readily available, and can be reported on at a moment’s notice.

So, again, that is just a very quick update on what an applicant flow log is. If you do have questions about whether your organization is subject to Affirmative Action reporting, or whether you have to worry about an applicant flow log yourself, typically we would suggest that you check with a qualified labor and employment law attorney, so that they can review your particular business practices.

New Jersey’s Opportunity to Compete Act

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Over the past few months, the ExactHire team has shared information with you through our blogs on the “Ban the Box” movement and the legislative changes that have been implemented.  Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Hawaii are states that have enacted legislation in both the public and private sectors relating to when a background check can be incorporated into the applicant review process.  The “Ban the Box” movement is running full speed ahead, and New Jersey is the newest state to pass legislation to “ban the box” on both public and private sector employment applications.

On August 11, 2014, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed New Jersey’s “The Opportunity to Compete Act” which requires public and private employers to remove any questions related to the applicant’s criminal history (AKA “ban the box”) from employment applications beginning March 1, 2015.  This legislation does not mean that employers cannot conduct background checks on applicants; however, background checks must come later in the hiring process and/or when a job offer is extended unless the company/position meets certain exceptions outlined in the legislation.

To keep abreast of States and Cities who enact “Ban the Box” legislation, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) has an interactive map that provides an overview of the current legislative status.  An overview of the legislation for the locations with “Ban the Box” legislation can be found here.  For the actual legislation, you will need to go directly to the state or city government website to access the passed law(s) in its comprehensive language.

Employers need to be aware of the legislation that exists and which is pending to be prepared for the potential impact on their organizations.  If your organization currently has hiring practices in multiple states and cities, or posts job listings nationally, it is important to be cognizant of the locales’ legal expectations.  At ExactHire, we take pride in doing our best to ensure our clients’ satisfaction is the highest possible. We do whatever we can to resolve clients’ current needs and identify potential needs.  After you speak with your legal counsel, and if you and your legal team decide changes need to be made to your employment application(s) to comply with legislation, the ExactHire team can work with you to create a new application with the verbiage you specify for compliance.  Also, please know that one of the benefits of using ExactHire’s HireCentric software as your applicant tracking system is that you can create multiple employment applications, each specific to your needs.  If you’re an existing client looking for more information about updating your current employment application(s) and/or creating additional employment applications, please email support@exacthire.com.

Please note:  The ExactHire team is not legal counsel, and we do not offer legal advice, so any questions regarding your company’s eligibility for exemption with the “Ban the Box” legislation and/or proper verbiage for your company’s employment application(s) should be discussed with your company’s legal counsel.  To learn specifically how New Jersey’s “The Opportunity to Compete Act” affects your organization’s hiring practices, please contact your company’s legal team.

If you are not yet an ExactHire client, for more information about HireCentric ATS, please visit our resources page or contact us today.

Image credit: Jersey City Skyline at Sunset (Explore) by geezaweezer (contact)

What Employers Need to Know About Ban the Box Legislation

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Ban the Box.  Whether you agree or disagree with the concept, one thing we all can agree on is that this movement requires our attention in our organization’s hiring practices.  Depending on the states in which an organization hires individuals, “Ban the Box” takes a heightened level of importance since states and cities throughout the United States are enacting various forms of this legislation.  The future of hiring is rapidly changing so it is important for human resources professionals to be aware of existing and pending legislation that directly affects daily hiring practices in order to prevent an organization from experiencing legal ramifications due to noncompliance.

About “Ban the Box”

“Ban the Box” is the removal of any questions asking about an individual’s prior criminal record from an employer’s job application…essentially, barring any check boxes that an applicant might have had to mark on an employment application in the past.  The “Ban the Box” concept is based on the idea that limiting the employer’s access to the applicant’s conviction records prior to a job offer can help ex-offenders find employment based on their merit and skills instead of being eliminated from consideration for the position potentially due to the applicant’s past criminal record.  Through the “Ban the Box” movement, advocates of this concept express the belief that if hiring representatives did not know about the applicant’s criminal background, hiring representatives would not factor that information in the decision making process as the applicant goes through the employer’s hiring channels resulting in a more “fair chance” approach to ex-offenders.  The biggest benefit according to “Ban the Box” supporters is that when ex-offenders acquire employment, ideally, the recidivism rate would decrease which would also provide a boost to our overall economy.  According to an article published by NBC News, the latest U.S. census figures estimate approximately 70 million adults in the United States have some form of criminal record.  This equates to approximately one in four individuals in the United States with a criminal record.

Ban the Box legislation does not force an employer to hire an individual with a criminal record.  The ban would not necessarily prohibit an employer from conducting background checks; the checks would possibly occur later in the hiring process and/or once an offer is extended to the applicant.  Exceptions could exist for certain jobs as mandated by federal law (ex. prohibiting pedophiles from working with children, etc.)

History

In San Francisco, the “Ban the Box” campaign was started over a decade ago in a civil rights movement of formerly and currently incarcerated individuals and their families in an organized group, All of Us or None.  They began to encourage the local government to remove questions related to convictions from job applications so ex-offenders could be evaluated on their qualifications and not their prior record(s).  In their vision, any questions about convictions could be asked later in the hiring process, if needed.  The efforts by All of Us or None paid off; the city of San Francisco was the first to remove the question from city job applications.  This victory was the catalyst for the current “Ban the Box” movement.  In 1998, Hawaii was the first state to pass legislation to “Ban the Box” about conviction related questions on both public and private sector employment applications, statewide.

Current Ban the Box Laws and Ordinances

According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), thirteen states have implemented some degree of a statewide “Ban the Box” Fair Chance Hiring Law.  Thirty states have enacted a local or state “Ban the Box” Fair Chance Hiring Law.  With the “Ban the Box” trend in motion, it is just a matter of time before additional states, cities and jurisdictions enact similar legislation.  The statewide “Ban the Box” legislation enacted in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island include employers in both the public and private sectors, and Illinois and New Jersey are following in their footsteps beginning in 2015.

To keep abreast of States and Cities who enact “Ban the Box” legislation, NELP has an interactive map that provides an overview of the current legislative status.  An overview of the legislation for the locations with “Ban the Box” legislation can be found here.  For the actual legislation, you will need to go directly to the state or city government website to access the passed law(s) in its comprehensive language.

Employers need to be aware of the legislation that exists and which is pending to be prepared for the potential impact on their organizations.  If your organization currently has hiring practices in multiple states and cities, or posts job listings nationally, it is important to be cognizant of the locales’ legal expectations.  At ExactHire, we take pride in doing our best to ensure our clients’ satisfaction is the highest possible. We do whatever we can to resolve clients’ current needs and identify potential needs.  After you speak with your legal counsel, and if you and your legal team decide changes need to be made to your employment application(s) to comply with legislation, the ExactHire team can work with you to create a new application with the verbiage you specify for compliancy.  Also, please know that one of the benefits of using HireCentric as your applicant tracking software is that you can create multiple employment applications, each specific to your needs.  For more information about updating your current employment application(s) and/or creating additional employment applications, please email support@exacthire.com.

Please note:  The ExactHire team is not legal counsel, and we do not offer legal advice, so any questions regarding your company’s eligibility for exemption with the “Ban the Box” legislation and/or proper verbiage for your company’s employment application(s) should be discussed with your company’s legal counsel.

Related links of importance:

If you are not yet an ExactHire client, but are interested in using an applicant tracking system and online employment application, please visit our resources page for additional information or contact us today.

Image credit: rainbow cubes with holes by jared (contact)

How to Make Sure an Electronic Signature is Valid – Whiteboard [VIDEO]

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If you’re trying to determine how you can use technology to make the employee onboarding process paperless, then there are some things you should know about e-signatures. In today’s Whiteboard Chat, Jeff Hallam discusses the elements that are included in a legitimate electronic signature.

Video Transcript:

Hi! Today we’re going to talk about electronic signatures. And this is something that comes up a lot in today’s world as more and more organizations are looking for solutions that can help expedite collecting signatures, and really, the idea today is to make sure that we can help you better understand some of the essential items that have to be there in order for an electronic signature to be as valid as a regular physical signature.

And again as a quick precursor, none of this is meant to be legal advice. If you have more detailed questions, I would always recommend that you seek your attorney of choice. But hopefully this will at least give you a pretty good checklist of things to consider as you go down this path. So really everything starts with a piece of legislation passed back in 2000 called the E-Signature Act. More commonly know as the E-Sign Act. So as you go down this path you’ll probably hear that terminology used and really all that was designed to do was to lay out a common set of protocols that all providers and organizations could use to make sure that key elements of an electronic signature were consistent across the board.

So really, what we’re going to start with are kind of just these four common things that have to be present in order to make sure that you are in compliance from an e-Sign Act perspective.

So the first one is review. As you would expect with any kind of typical physical document, nobody’s going to sign that until they actually have a chance to see what it is that they are signing. The same thing applies with electronic signature. You have to give the person who’s being asked to sign the document access to that document so they can confirm what’s on it, and that they can indicate that they are in agreement with that. Pretty standard, but again, just to make sure that that would be part of what’s offered and to check on that.

Secondly, and this is really more at the core of the technology side of things, is the ability to prove that the signature is unique and verifiable. And, there are different ways to do this and I’m going to hit on more of the best practices approach. Really there are three elements involved in making sure that this signature becomes unique and verifiable. Number one, you have to be able to record something that constitutes a signature. And, that can be anything from checking a box, filling their name into a box of text on a screen, all the way down to an actual mouse pad signature where somebody would attempt to replicate their signature electronically. Whatever approach somebody uses doesn’t really matter at that point as long as that is recorded.

Secondly, you’re typically going to want to make sure that there’s a date and a time stamp to that signature so that it can be found and tied back to when this actually occurred. And then finally, in most instances you’re going to want to record the IP address of the computer or the device where someone was when they issued that signature. And now as you combine all three of those elements, it is very easy to go back and confirm that the person who appeared to sign the document actually did.

Thirdly, we get to consent. If there are documents that are longer, or a little more complicated, and/or those that have repercussions if certain conditions aren’t met or rules aren’t followed, its always a good idea, again best practices-wise, to have a way to make sure that the person is really clear on what that consent means. So, for instance on the I-9 form, which is something we run into very frequently, there are certain penalties that may be imposed if you’re found to have been untruthful in documenting somebody’s citizenship status. Well, as the person being asked to sign off on that, while it is in the document, the I-9 is several pages long. So, what you might do in those instances is look for an opportunity to either highlight those key areas so its very clear to the person and those are called out; or, perhaps even bring a copy of those key elements down into the signature area where they are being asked to sign so that its very clear again that they understand what it is exactly that they are consenting to at that point.

And then finally, access and change. This kind of works both sides of the street – access means the person that we have asked to sign the document has to have the ability after that transaction is complete, to download and access a copy of that for their records. Print, save, whatever it might be. Likewise, on the other side of the street, the group that originated the transaction, is prohibited from making any changes to that signed agreement unless its approved by the person that was asked to sign it in the first place.

And again, nothing different than what you would see in a regular contract or signing arrangement physically, but again, making sure that these four elements are all there, and that those criteria exist, and that whatever vendor or developer you’re working with can prove those items will make sure that you can stay in compliance and that your electronic signatures are every bit as valid as a physical signature. Thanks!

For more information about how ExactHire’s employee onboarding software utilizes e-signatures, please visit our resources section or contact us today.

Background Checks & Hiring – 7 Things to Consider

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Since the revised EEOC guidance rules were published in 2012, there has been much speculation and frustration among employers as to the use of criminal history checks in the hiring process. These updated guidelines for background checks are especially challenging for small and mid-sized organizations, as they typically don’t have the legal resources readily available to help keep them compliant.

I’ve heard these complaints from clients over the past 18 months. At the same time, I’ve been fortunate enough to receive some tips from background check providers as to what employers can do to help avoid any undue exposure. Below are some of the things they’ve shared with me that I might recommend:

#1 – Have updated job descriptions

Everyone has heard this ad nauseum, but with these EEOC revisions, this is even more important than it has been in the past. And, if you are using an applicant tracking system such as HireCentric, creating updated job descriptions can be done quite efficiently through the use of job templates.

#2 – Be very careful in asking about criminal convictions on your employment application

While the finer points of this bear further discussion with a qualified Labor & Employment Law attorney, the key is to avoid any appearance that applicants having prior criminal convictions are excluded from serious consideration. Beyond this suggestion, many states have actually implemented legislation that makes it illegal to even ask this type of question on the employment application.

#3 – Consider only criminal convictions relevant to the job for which an applicant is applying

The fact that an applicant committed a crime is no longer considered sufficient reason to exclude that person from consideration for a position. In addition, you must be able to show that the crime for which that applicant was convicted creates risk for the organization if they are placed in a given position. An example…the fact that an applicant was convicted for shoplifting doesn’t pose any undue or unreasonable risk for the employer if the applicant is being hired to run a manufacturing machine. However, if that same applicant is being hired to manage company funds, most would agree that the shoplifting conviction is more relevant to that position and could create exposure for the employer.

#4 – Convictions must be recent enough to indicate significant risk

This is very subjective, but the intent here is to make sure that applicants who were convicted for offenses many years ago aren’t excluded from consideration unnecessarily. Another component to this is that applicant attempts at rehabilitation and recent job performance results should be considered. If someone was convicted of a crime 15-20 years ago, but has been employed and showed good performance in positions since then, that conviction likely shouldn’t be used as a way to disqualify the applicant from consideration.

#5 – You get what you pay for

There are a number of inexpensive ways to gather criminal history for applicants. While this isn’t meant to be a “plug” for any particular provider, this is an area where cutting corners can result in big penalties. Be sure to use a qualified provider of these services who can not only provide the conviction history, but who can also provide advice and counsel when needed.

#6 – Confirm convictions at the original source

This is an extension of the point above. Once a conviction shows up in any criminal history search, be sure your provider can locate and provide information from the original source…typically found at the county or municipal level. Since many of these government entities are not fully computerized, this often requires someone physically visiting a courthouse to manually locate and confirm the conviction information contained in the criminal history search.

#7 – Allow applicants to challenge any convictions found

By law, any conviction information found in a criminal history search must be disclosed to the applicant for potential appeal. It’s not uncommon for someone to have a conviction show on their record, when the actual person convicted of the offense is a different person. They may share the same name, but have completely different dates of birth or Social Security numbers. When using a provider, be sure they will either notify applicants on your behalf (ideally) or provide you the means to do so yourself (at a minimum).

By way of full disclosure, I am not an attorney and this is not meant to be legal advice. Instead, these are some effective tips that have been shared with me since the revised EEOC guidelines were released in 2012. I hope these are helpful for your organization, but I recommend speaking with an attorney or a representative from your criminal history provider for more details on this topic.

For more information about ExactHire’s applicant tracking software or potential background checking providers, please contact us today. 

Image credit: 3D Scales of Justice by Chris Potter (contact)

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