Reporting from the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference
I had the pleasure of attending the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference this past Friday. It was again organized by Paul DeBettignies, again located at the Best Buy world headquarters, again sold out, and again attended by well over 100 recruiters and other human resource professionals. About 60 percent were corporate recruiters/HR, 20 percent consultants, 15 percent third party recruiters / headhunters, and five percent oddballs such as me. Next date is Friday, May 16, 2008. Be there or be square.
The first session was by TJ Conley, an attorney with Leonard, Street & Deinard. About the only thing that I can take credit for is that I helped to connect Paul and TJ.
The presentation by TJ covered a fair amount of ground but the area that was of most interest to me was about the legal risks to employers when they use Google or other Internet resources as part of their background checking process. Those risks include:
- In states such as Minnesota, there’s a risk of a discrimination lawsuit if the employer declines to hire an employee because of off-duty conduct such as smoking or drinking alcohol. Too bad that such protections apparently don’t extend to teachers in Pennsylvania who are photographed drinking out of plastic cups while wearing funny hats.
- States such as New York prohibit employers from discriminating against a candidate because of their political beliefs. But in states such as Minnesota, it is perfectly acceptable to decline to hire a Democrat if you’re a Republic or vice versa. I guess we don’t take our politics as seriously here.
- Nationally you’re going to run into a problem if you discriminate against someone based upon a protected characteristic like religion or disability. Ever look at a Facebook profile? Right up near the top is a spot for your religious affiliation. Hmmm.
TJ recommended that employers do the following to protect themselves:
- Establish a company policy regarding which search engines they’re going to use, how they’re going to use them, etc.
- Have a non-decision maker filter out the bad information such as religious affiliation and then pass the rest of the information to the decision maker for review.
- Confirm the information. If a candidate’s MySpace profile indicates that they like to get drunk and have sex with strangers, don’t assume that they posted that information. It may have been posted by someone else for kicks and giggles or to hurt them.
- Document your decision making process and adhere to it.
Paul and TJ, awesome job!
