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<b style="color: blue">Human Resource Associates</b>
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<span class="heading">HR - On The Job</span>
<p class="issue">When Is An Applicant Not An Applicant?</p>
<p>It sounds like a trick question, but it's actually a very serious one with regards to employment, and has been not only now but for more than 40 years. Whether or not an individual is a bona fide applicant for employment would seem to be a no-brainer. “Are you here to apply for a job?” “Yes, I am.” “Okay, fill out this application form, leave it with the lady at the door, and we'll call you if we've got anything.” Enough said; one more applicant! Well, maybe. For a company with five or six employees, it may not be a serious problem. But, for many companies, counting applicants can be a complicated and expensive issue.</p>
<p>For example, an individual calls you inquiring about employment. You tell him you will take his name and let him know when you have an opening, and you never call him back. You find out later that he is a minority and has filed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charges against you for discrimination. His charge claims that you rejected all the minorities but you hired 90 percent of all Caucasians who applied. He can prove that eight of his friends, all minorities, called you on the phone or sent you an e-mail, and they never received a call back. He further claims he knows that at least 11 Caucasians applied to you in person and all were contacted again. So, the EEOC demands that you provide it with a list of all applicants identified by race and sex. It also wants to know what happened to each applicant and why. Your records show there are 11 applications on file and that there are no minority applicants among them. How can there be such a discrepancy between your records and his? Apparently, each of you has a different concept of what constitutes an applicant.</p>
<p>There are many circumstances that may require you to document formally how you process all candidates for employment. For example, you may be required to submit an affirmative action program in order to gain a county, state, or federal contract, or you may be applying for a business loan or liability insurance coverage that requires you to describe your hiring process. In today's recruiting environment, you not only must have a bona fide, auditable process for hiring applicants, but, more specifically, you also must have a definition of who you consider to <em>be</em> an applicant.</p>
<p>Let's assume that your hiring process is to review the qualifications of all applicants, to rank them in order of desirability, and then to start the interviewing process with the highest qualified. That would seem appropriate. Next, you must determine what to do with the applications from those candidates that were not hired. Do you destroy them, and if so, when? Do you keep them on file, and if so, for how long — 30 days, six months, a year? Do you keep each applicant informed as to his or her status? Do you review the applications when you have new openings? Do you call them back for additional interviews? When your process is documented, you will have a basic “applicant tracking” process. Once you have this process, keep in mind that all applicants must be treated equally.</p>
<p>Now, let's go back to the original question. Once you know how you intend to do the record keeping, follow-up, re-interviewing, and processing you intend to provide, you need to determine who the individuals are who will be so processed. If you consider the interested party who calls you on the phone as an applicant, you will have to provide all those services to any other such caller. If you consider all people interested in employment to be applicants, then you must keep track of all interested people. This includes the casual caller, the interested person your manager meets at Starbucks, the candidate who doesn't complete the application form, and the one who doesn't respond when called. If you consider all of these to be applicants, then you must provide them all with the same process. Did you tell a few of them that you would keep them on file for six months for further consideration? Then you have to do so for all of them.</p>
<p>In your policy, you might define an applicant as someone:</p>
<ol>
<li>Who applies for an existing job opening or a job you intend to fill later, and</li>
<li>Who has supplied enough information via a résumé or a completed application for you to evaluate his or her qualifications and to contact him or her.</li>
</ol>
<p>Only someone fitting this description would be considered an applicant. You should emphatically refuse to process any individuals who do not meet these requirements. You never want to process and hire someone who just calls or drops by, unless you want to process all such candidates who do the same. You may drop the applicant for any valid reason at any time during the next steps. For example, applicants who do not respond when you attempt to contact them can be dropped.</p>
<p>In many large companies, the cost of maintaining an applicant tracking process with follow-up, call back, and re-interviews is so expensive that they no longer consider any application after 30 days. The data is recorded and the applications are destroyed or archived. This limits the number of applicants they must track, contact, and possibly report on later.</p>
<p>Employers have traditionally kept every application on file forever. Many still do, but that's an old-fashioned concept that is just too risky today. Determine who you consider to be an applicant and what the process of application is, and then see that everyone in the company sticks to it.</p>
<hr />
<p align="center"><b><i>Have an employment question?</i></b></p>
<p align="center">Send it to <a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=From HR On The Job">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p align="center">Please include Company Name and Association in your e-mail. Company identification will be kept confidential.</p>
<hr />
<p class="heading">Hitchhiking on the Information Highway</p>
<p><b>Dateline:</b> January 2011</p>
<p><i>(Note: Although we attempt to provide the HRU update on the first of each month, we are normally delayed awaiting the release of several monthly government statistical reports. We will hereafter update the information as each report becomes available without waiting for all of them to be released.)</i></p>
<p class="section">Uncle Sam Wants You...</p>
<p class="subtitle">... To Go Union</p>
<p>The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in December announced a proposed rule that will require U.S. employers to post a notice advising employees about their right to form unions and how to contact the government and a union for assistance.</p>
<ul>
<li>Take action against their employer to improve working conditions</li>
<li>Raise work related complaints with the company</li>
<li>Gain the support of the federal government</li>
<li>Seek help from a union</li>
<li>Engage in strikes and picketing</li>
</ul>
<p>In 2009 the government required similar posters for federal contractors. They also added that those companies must use union workers if they had previously done the work or if union workers were available. But this is the first move on the private sector where union membership has been shrinking for 50 years. Less than 8% of private employees are union while union membership among government employees is now higher (38%) than it had ever been in the private sector.</p>
<p>The NLRB will accept comments from the public for 60 days up to February 22, 2011. You can gain more information at <a href="http://www.nlrb.gov">www.nlrb.gov</a> or you can register comments at <a href="http://www.regulations.gov">www.regulations.gov</a>.</p>
<p class="quote">
“You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.<br />
You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.<br />
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.<br />
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them<br />
what they could and should do for themselves”<br />
- Reverend William John Henry Becker
</p>
<p class="section">This Is Your Uncle Sam Again...</p>
<p class="subtitle">... Stop Checking Credit On Job Applicants</p>
<p>Only about 13% of U.S. employers do credit checks on all their job applicants. But nearly 50% use them for applicants seeking jobs with financial responsibilities. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has determined that credit checks make it tougher for women, non-whites and the handicapped to find work as they are paid less than and therefore have lower credit scores.</p>
<p>Although the regulations have not yet been changed, the EEOC has filed a discrimination suit against the Freeman Company for having failed to hire minorities based partly on credit scores.</p>
<p class="quote">
“Check small things.<br />
You can't make someone else's choices.<br />
You shouldn't let someone else make yours”<br />
- General Colin Powell</p>
<p class="section">Population Growth Is Slowing Down</p>
<p>According to the new census report, the U.S. population jumped from 309.7 million in 2009 up to 311.9 million in 2010. That's a big jump, but in fact the rate of growth is slowing down as shown in this comparison between 2009 and 2010:</p>
<table>
<tr><td></td><td>2009</td><td>2010</td></tr>
<tr><td>One new birth every</td><td>7 seconds</td><td>8 seconds</td></tr>
<tr><td>One death every</td><td>13 seconds</td><td>11 seconds</td></tr>
<tr><td>One new immigrant every</td><td>35 seconds</td><td>45 seconds</td></tr>
<tr><td>Net gain = one person every</td><td>11 seconds</td><td>15 seconds</td></tr>
</table>
<p>Note that the only factor showing growth in the population is the death rate. It is decreasing as we are living longer.</p>
<p class="quote">
“Never loan your car to someone to whom you have given birth”<br />
- Erma Bombeck
</p>
<p class="section">New Minimum Wage Rates for 7 States</p>
<p>The federal minimum wage rate is $7.25 per hour. No state may set the rate any lower than this (although there are a few unusual exceptions), but any state may require a higher amount and many do.</p>
<p>The following 7 states have raised the minimum wage rate for 2011:</p>
<table>
<tr><td>Arizona</td><td>From $7.25 to $7.35 per hour</td></tr>
<tr><td>Colorado</td><td>From $7.24 to $7.36</td></tr>
<tr><td>Montana</td><td>From $7.25 to $7.35</td></tr>
<tr><td>Ohio</td><td>From $7.30 to $7.40</td></tr>
<tr><td>Oregon</td><td>From $8.40 to $8.50</td></tr>
<tr><td>Vermont</td><td>From $8.06 to $8.15</td></tr>
<tr><td>Washington</td><td>From $8.55 to $8.67</td></tr>
</table>
<p>Florida and Missouri require annual cost-of-living-adjustments (COLA), but no COLA was approved for 2011.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: center"><sub>© William J. Cook</sub></p>
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<div id="sidebar">
<span class="heading">Labor Stats</span>
<hr />
<b>Federal Minimum Wage</b>
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<p align="center">
<b>$7.25</b>/hour<br />
</p>
<hr />
<b>Average Income</b>
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<table>
<tr><td /><td class="u">December 2010</td><td class="u">December 2009</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Hourly</td><td class="b">$27.78</td><td class="b">$22.38</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Weekly</td><td class="b">$781.35</td><td class="b">$756.44</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Federal Povery Level</b>
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<table>
<tr><td class="i">one person</td><td class="b">$10,956</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">family of four</td><td class="b">$21,954</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>IRS Mileage Allowance</b>
<hr />
<p>As of January 1, 2011</p>
<table>
<tr><td class="i">business</td><td><b>51</b> cents/mile</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">medical or moving</td><td class="b">19</b></td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">charitable</td><td class="b">14</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Postage</b>
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<table>
<tr><td class="i">1 oz</td><td><b>44</b> cents</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">postcard</td><td class="b">28</td></tr>
</table>
<hr />
<b>Population</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">world</td><td class="b">6.9 billion</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">U.S.</td><td class="b">311.9 million</td></tr>
</table>
<p align="center">
<i>one birth every </i><b>8</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>one death every </i><b>11</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>one new immigrant every </i><b>45</b><i> seconds;</i><br />
<i>net gain of one person every </i><b>15</b><i> seconds.</i>
</p>
<hr />
<b>U.S. Civilian Workforce</b>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td /><td class="u">December 2010</td><td class="u">December 2009</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Total</td><td class="b">153,690,000</td><td class="b">153,172,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Employed</td><td class="b">139,206,000</td><td class="b">137,960,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Unemployed</td><td class="b">14,485,000</td><td class="b">15,212,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Want A Job</td><td class="b">6,471,000</td><td class="b">6,218,000</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">Unemployment Rate</td><td class="b">9.4%</td><td class="b">9.9%/td></tr>
</table>
<br /><hr />
<b>U.S. Workforce Productivity</b><br />
<sub><i>(The amount of goods produced, divided by the number of work hours it took to produce it)</i></sub>
<hr />
<table>
<tr><td class="i">1992</td><td class="b">3.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1993</td><td class="b">0.5%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1994</td><td class="b">1.3%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1995</td><td class="b">0.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1996</td><td class="b">2.5%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1997</td><td class="b">2.0%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1998</td><td class="b">2.6%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">1999</td><td class="b">3.3%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2000</td><td class="b">3.4%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2001</td><td class="b">2.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2002</td><td class="b">4.6%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2003</td><td class="b">3.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2004</td><td class="b">2.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2005</td><td class="b">1.7%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2006</td><td class="b">0.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2007</td><td class="b">1.9%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2008</td><td class="b">1.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2009</td><td class="b">+5.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2010 1st quarter</td><td class="b">+2.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2010 2nd quarter</td><td class="b">-1.8%</td></tr>
<tr><td class="i">2010 3rd quarter</td><td class="b">+2.3%</td></tr>
</table>
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