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One Trick Pony- BusinessWeek Online- OFCCP Rule is no SOX follow this blog post

posted by on April 2, 2007

I may as well just rename this blog ?OFCCP blog? since I can?t seem to write about much of anything else. Every time I try to get away, some article, webinar, or person pulls me right back in?.

This time, it?s a link from The Chad to a Business Week Online article.

As the author, Kurt Ronn, nicely puts it, first things first:

The new emphasis on systemic employment discrimination forces companies to change their talent-acquisition process to be compliant. Rather than complain about recruitment constraints or disregard the new regulations, companies must find ways to work within the guidelines. The result will be a more effective process, less discrimination, and better talent.

Sure, why complain about recruitment constraints? I mean, just because your job descriptions (which some thinkers say are obsolete anyway) now need to be mealy mouthed nonsense, and you need to cut and paste hundreds of resumes a week (that may or may not mean anything), why would anybody get all negative and complain? Also that?s an interesting formulation in the last sentence; will complying with poorly conceived and disproportionate rules actually create better talent? If that?s the case, I can think of lots of talent growth strategies!

Later, he writes:

The defined recruitment stages within an ATS force recruiters and hiring managers to document their recruitment, resulting in a higher level of consistency and visibility. The resulting data can be analyzed for systemic discrimination as well as a host of other issues (e.g., time-to-fill, source of candidates, interview-to-offer ratio, etc.) to help pinpoint areas for improvement in the talent-acquisition pipeline.

This is a good reality check for those of us steeped in the recruiting blogosphere. Those notions would have been current thinking in around 1995, if then. Today, we are thinking about downstream quality of hire and referral node density, and does anyone still think ATS has much to do with recruiting in the meaningful sense of the word?

And another nugget that I have been hearing lately and totally reject:

How are we doing from a compliance point of view?" (Akin to public companies and Sarbanes-Oxley.)

The Internet applicant rule is not analogous to SOX for a several good reasons. One is that SOX arose out of some very real cases of bad accounting- I have yet to hear of major enforcement cases or academic work showing that employment discrimination has been occurring through the use of keywords and resume search engines. A second is that SOX is designed to ensure adequate control objectives and execution, across a spectrum of industries and financial models, while the Internet Applicant Rule mandates procedures directly. SOX is designed to deliver quantitatively better accounting, while the OFCCP Internet Applicant Rule is in no way designed to deliver better recruiting.
 
Another is that compliance with SOX is really a two-part deal, only one of which is subjective (planning v. sign-off).  Because of the "basic qualifications" test in the OFCCP rule, its enforcement bound to be subjective.   
Mr, Ronn is convinced that the rule must be and will be followed, and I agree, but I remain hopeful that at some point soon, enforcement action will commence and this matter will end up in federal court, where right thinking jurists will see it for what it really is; a constitutional affront, a violation of Executive Order 12866, and a costly mandate that neither meets its goals nor creates better processes.    
 
Spinning this rule as somehow equal to SOX in intent or effect is a bad idea for everyone involved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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4 comments

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  • 1 point 2 years ago

    To me, the nut graf of your post was this:

    ""Who is an applicant? As the OFCCP came to define it, pre-internet applicant recordkeeping rule, an applicant was anyone who expressed an interest in employment. Period. This led the OFCCP to insist that any time an employer USED Monster, Careerbuilder, etc., *everyone* in their database was an applicant, and the employer needed to make an effort to obtain their race and gender"

    The key word USED is what changed- recording the downloading a resume and calling (or not calling) a candidate is a far cry from recording of keywords and entire search result sets. I dont think the idea is to be able to rerun the search at a later time for compliance-its not likely that the search result sets would stay intact over time- names could be addded or deleted from databases or other changes made at any time...they want a self contained reference.

    When this encounters the Paperwork Reduction Act, will it be irresistable object v. imovable object ?

  • 1 point 2 years ago

    Ahab-

    I haven't checked yet but I would be curious as to how many people within the OFCCP have ever spent time recruiting versus how many in the SEC have spent time on the financial side of the fence. Let?s see if the data exists and I?ll get back to you...

    For those who don't know him, Kurt is the president and founder of HRworks. Sorry Kurt but you too have fallen prey to the guilty until proven innocent focus of the Internet Applicant Rule.

    You write, "...if a recruiter excludes from Internet search results zip codes that are predominantly populated by African Americans, there could be discrimination based on how the technology was used. Using systemic discrimination as a benchmark can result in much larger conciliation agreements or settlements than individual cases." Nothing personal against this audience but far too many recruiters don't even know how to search with zip code delimiters.

    Here's another statement: "Rather than complain about recruitment constraints or disregard the new regulations, companies must find ways to work within the guidelines." So if it's significantly impacting the business, say nothing? Suck it up companies - do the right thing!

    "The result will be a more effective process, less discrimination, and better talent." Proof? Any findings that can be replicated?

    Now before anyone gets to jumping ugly, of course there are instances of systemic discrimination...globally. But when Kurt offers:

    "Companies are being asked to be creative, to design and implement a compliant systemic talent acquisition engine."

    Why yes they are but companies don't recruit, recruiters do and they're the ones who need more help. So where's the money???

    Man, do some people just not see the forest through the trees!

  • 1 point 2 years ago

    This meme that the rule is somehow like SOX is bad spin.

    Don't worry about me giving up beating on the rule- its my white whale !

  • 1 point 2 years ago

    Your opinion is valid on this, and equal time expressing it is vital if a "jury" that will someday convene is to understand both sides of the issue.