Auditing Your Interview & Hiring Practices

Even if you create a recruiting and hiring playbook, you must accept that no company is perfect. Every company has room for improvement in the recruitment process. Plus, laws, technology, and economies change. What works in one market, state, or year may not work in another. That’s why I recommend that companies audit their interviewing and hiring practices annually. 

One route you should consider for auditing your hiring practices is using the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (“UGESP”). Courts can use the UGESP as a measuring stick to help gauge if there are unlawful hiring practices that would support a discrimination claim. While passing an internal UGESP-based audit doesn’t guarantee a win in court, it will likely go far in demonstrating good faith. 

Make sure you take care of the east fixes. Avoid simple mistakes like job postings without pay ranges, equal opportunity language, or biased language. But you should also keep in mind higher level issues like pay equity and proper FLSA exemption claims.

I get it if you might not have the bandwidth to go through a full-fledged annual audit. If that’s the case, hire an employment attorney or human resources expert to review your hiring policies and interview questions and provide feedback. A few hours might give you some protection against an expensive claim.