U.S.Laws May Make Online Job Hunting Harder

j00bar writes "CNN/Fortune is reporting that applying for a job online is going to get harder. 'New federal guidelines meant to standardize how employers track data on the diversity of their job-applicant pool are taking effect starting today for jobs at federal contractors -- and similar rules will kick in later this year at U.S. companies with more than 50 employees. And resumes and search approaches that worked perfectly well before may no longer do the trick.'"

Re:It only applies to FEDERAL JOBS

[geekoid]

At first, then it is rolling out to all eomplyers with over 50 employees.

This will actually make matters much worse..

[wfberg]

In many cases, government jobs are already required to be advertised widely, and candidates must be considered on the basis of their qualifications. This means, that if you have your golfing buddy in mind for the job, all you have to do is make sure the qualifications listed match his (and only his) profile. Now, if applicants have to conform to the qualifications 100% this is a much, much easier process. Imagine a wanted ad like "senior business consultant with 13 years experience in federal auditing blahblah and a minimum of 3, but no more that 4 weeks of experience in an abbatoir", or whatever crappy holiday job the schmuck had.

Of course, if you do want to give a lot of people a shot, you just state "requirements: carbon based lifeform, literacy" and "the following are a plus: ......"

So, really, this helps the government hiring cheats.

Actual Details from Ars Technica

[rueger]

Hurrah - someone with research skills!

The actual rule:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/fedreg/final/200502017 6.htm [dol.gov]
Obligation To Solicit Race and Gender Data for Agency Enforcement Purposes

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060207-6127 .html [arstechnica.com]

Do you know what the OFCCP is? It is the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and that little taste of bureaucratic alphabet soup is a part of the Department of Labor's Employment Standards Administration. The OFCCP's job is to ensure "that employers doing business with the Federal government comply with the laws and regulations requiring nondiscrimination." In essence, that makes the OFCCP one of the many departments that exist within the government to monitor activities and make sure things are done properly and fairly. A noble goal, to be sure, but the OFCCP has distinguished itself with a new rule going into effect this week regarding the tracking of those who apply for jobs on the Internet, and it may have repercussions for anyone using electronic means to search for a new career.

Re:Might be difficult....

[CFrankBernard]

The employer is eROI, Inc.: http://portland.craigslist.org/sad/126471389.html [craigslist.org]

Re:Here is a question

[drgonzo59]

Speaking about the term Caucasian, here is an article from the Journal of Internal Medicine [annals.org] that talks about the history of the term, and how it is basically just as offensive to use as "negro".

The bottom line is that 'race is an unscientific construct'. And here is another small excerpt:

Blumenbach, the German anthropologist and anatomist, first used the word "race" in 1775 to classify humans into five divisions: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach also coined the term "Caucasian" because he believed that the Caucasus region of Asia Minor produced "the most beautiful race of men." Both Linnaeus and Blumenbach stated that humans are one species, and the latter remarked on the arbitrary nature of his proposed categories.

These men were products and producers of the prejudices of their era, but it is remarkable how similar the concept and categories of race remain today, even after it has been widely documented that phenotypic and biochemical variations do not correlate simply with genotypic differences.

More thorough, less retarded analysis

[ThePedanticPrick]

here [washington.edu]

This Annie person ought to be fired, IMO.

Re:Ok, I'm lost.

[Helios1182]

You stole my post from Fark word for word. I'm impressed someone kept it even.

READ THE PDF!

[oh_my_080980980]

For the love of Mike, people, READ THE FRICKIN' PDF!

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/fedreg/final/200502017 6.htm [dol.gov]

The rule is for FEDERAL CONTRACTORS!!! Hello, can anyone read around here. This does not apply to NON-FEDERAL CONTRACTORS. Again, READ THE PDF. It's prefereable to having morons posting comments.

Re:Ok, I'm lost.

[thief_inc]

My department head was getting yelled at by our HR, because out of 75 field service engineers we had 1 female. I feel for him finding an experianced electronics technician, knowledgeable in both fluidic systems and biology and who won't mind flying to a different state at a moments notice and work 12 hour days is somewhat rare. NTM being able to supervise yourself 99% of the time and have good customer skills. Heck its rare to find a man that would do the same. So he went through all the motions advertising in women magazine and journals etc. I approached him with an applicants resume(my sister has the qualifications). And I asked him, "are you still looking to hire a woman?" He gets a look of horror on his face and explains to me that even if you are looking to hire a woman you cannot say you are looking to hire a woman or else that is discrimanation against men. So I gave my sisters resume and she got hired.

Re:Ok, I'm lost.

[limptrizkit]

Yeah... I'm lost too. And, technically speaking, I work for the HR department of one of the largest companies on Earth (incorporated in the US and falling within the OFCCP's definition of "Federal Contractor")... so this is not a good thing.

Incidentally, these new rules actually make me less lost. One of my biggest frustrations in the past has been guessing as to what the government means by "applicant". Developing the reports that need to go to the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has been an infuriating excercise for me in the past--I remember being pointed at several cabinets full of roughly categorized hardcopy resumes and official job application forms, along with countless electronic responses to job ads posted in various places, all of varying quality... and I was given a set of vague reporting requirements from the EEOC and told to work with a consultant and just "make it all go away".

Sadly, TFA (as others have pointed out) is not the greatest piece of reporting. The article makes the rules sound as if they're all brand new... and throws in a confusing and woefully incomplete statement about the statistics involved in recruiting--"diverse and random" is important, but the brief sentence devoted to it makes it sound as if companies are out there filling a hat with the names of anyone but white males and hiring the first people they pull out of the hat.

The new rules don't really introduce any drastically different practices--they mostly clarify guidelines that have existed for a long time. Now that the OFCCP has finally defined what they mean by "applicant", I'll be able to develop the reports they and other government agencies require without nearly as much guesswork as I had been forced to use before. And, contrary to the picture painted by TFA, the day-to-day process of posting jobs and filling positions won't really change. If anything, we'll be able to more accurately define the process and therefore be able to automate more of it, and keep human bias from affecting how the "applicant" pool is built--i.e., because no human will actually need to look at an "application" until sex/race data has been automatically stripped and stored in a separate table that users (HR/recruiters/managers) don't have access to, the users' personal biases will (hopefully) not enter into the process.

I know many of you probably won't believe me... but at least at my company, there's no great conspiracy where hiring is concerned... we're all just trying to make sure we get the right person in the right job without letting the position stay open forever. If the recruiters are doing their jobs right, the applicant pool should be sufficiently diverse to meet the government's requirements, and if the interviewers/managers are doing their jobs right, the people ultimately selected for jobs will be a representative cross-section of the applicant pool. The right people get the right jobs, the company gets good people in positions it needs filled, and no one gets sued. And, now that the government has made my job a little easier, I might get to go home after less than 4 hours of "casual" (unpaid) overtime more often.