Interviewing

Can I ask about attendance without violating ADA?

02/07/2011

Q. When interviewing prospective employees, will I violate the ADA by asking how many days of work they missed during the past year at their prior jobs?

Hire education: Filling job positions without inviting lawsuits

01/14/2011

Employers operate in an increasingly complex legal environment, made all the more difficult by the tough economy. Hiring has emerged as a particular trouble spot. You need to hire and maintain a skilled and productive workforce, but you must watch out for legal liability that can surface in the process.

Insist that managers conduct interviews–even if they ‘know’ who’s best for the job

01/14/2011

Supervisors may think they know all the candidates for promotion so well they can select one without actually interviewing the interested employees. That’s a big mistake. Chances are, if one of the disappointed applicants sues, the supervisor will have to answer very specific questions about the hiring process.

How many interviews are too many?

01/13/2011

Some employers schedule multiple interviews due mostly to tradition and habit, which can waste managers’ time, alienate top candidates and unnecessarily lengthen the hiring process. Use the following guidelines to create a strategy for conducting multiple interviews and determining how many are too many:

Candidate extra-qualified? Make a note of it

12/01/2010

Sometimes, a candidate stands out as a great potential hire. Whatever it is that signals this is a good hire, make sure you note it in your interview documentation. Otherwise, it may be hard to justify the decision if another applicant who met the basic job requirements sues and alleges some form of discrimination.

At hiring meetings, think like a consultant

11/16/2010

When new positions open up, HR professionals often meet with hiring managers to gather information about the job and develop hiring strategies. The problem: Too many HR pros take the wrong approach—a passive “order taking” approach—to these intake meetings. Here are ways to make the switch from order-taker to hiring consultant:

Deluged with résumés? How to be a speed weeder

11/02/2010

Reading every word on every résumé simply isn’t a luxury HR professionals can afford. If you quickly scan résumés, however, you probably live in constant fear of discarding potential winners. Advice: Spot-read résumés during the first round to determine if they merit a more detailed review.

13 applicants you don’t want to hire (plus 7 tips for decoding resumes)

09/21/2010

Desperate times mean job-seekers are resorting to desperate measures to make their résumés stand out in a crowd. Alas, many of those strategies backfire. Witness these résumé bloopers recently uncovered in a nationwide survey of hiring managers. Then check out our sure-fire advice for smoking out résumé untruths and exaggerations.

Give hiring managers a ‘cheat sheet’ on benefits

08/10/2010

“Communications don’t have to come from benefits people to raise concerns about company benefit liability,” says Pamela Perdue, a benefits attorney with Summers Compton & Wells in St. Louis. For that reason, Perdue suggests employers give their hiring managers a “cheat sheet” to reference when talking about company benefits.

Consistency the key to good hiring practices

08/05/2010

Courts don’t like to meddle in hiring decisions unless they see something obviously wrong with the hiring process. The key is to treat all qualified applicants alike—and then document that you did so. For example, hiring managers should ask the same questions of everyone they interview and use the same scale to rate each applicant.