Best Practices for Employers and EEO / HR Pros

Six hiring tips straight from the EEOC:

1. Recruit, hire, and promote with EEO principles in mind, by implementing practices designed to widen and diversify the pool of candidates considered for employment openings, including openings in upper level management.



2. Monitor for EEO compliance by conducting self-analyses to determine whether current employment practices disadvantage people of color, treat them differently, or leave uncorrected the effects of historical discrimination in the company.



3. Analyze the duties, functions, and competencies relevant to jobs. Then create objective, job-related qualification standards related to those duties, functions, and competencies. Make sure they are consistently applied when choosing among candidates.



4. Ensure selection criteria do not disproportionately exclude certain protected classes unless the criteria are valid predictors of successful job performance and meet the employer's business needs. For example, if educational requirements disproportionately exclude certain minority or racial groups, they may be illegal if not important for job performance or business needs.



5. Make sure promotion criteria are made known, and that job openings are communicated to all eligible employees.



6. When using an outside agency for recruitment, make sure the agency does not search weed out candidates of a particular protected class. Both the employer that made the request and the employment agency that honored it would be liable.

For expanded article, see http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/initiatives/e-race/bestpractices-employers.cfm.