Screening Unemployed Job Applicants: Pros and Cons to Consider - Webinar (Recorded)

Better deal with the legal and practical issues involved with using employment history as a barometer for evaluating applicants.

Many job applicants find themselves at a disadvantage if they are currently unemployed or have significant gaps in their employment history. Employers may be concerned that unemployment reflects poorly on an applicant’s ability or fitness for the job or may reflect poor past job performance. However, such an approach can also adversely impact workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own or left the workforce for legitimate reasons such as caring for children or family members or dealing with medical issues. In addition, ex-offenders with prior criminal records may run into barriers as well. At the same time, with record-low unemployment, businesses may find the need to look for new sources of labor, and overlooking unemployed applicants could mean they are missing an opportunity to locate additional talent.

Learn how to better deal with the legal and practical issues involved with using employment history as a barometer for evaluating applicants and examining if they are artificially limiting the potential applicant pool. Employers need to consider if using employment history can be discriminatory by adversely impacting applicants based on gender, age, or medical condition. This material will focus on the employment of ex-offenders who may have significant employment gaps caused by incarceration and will include a discussion of the EEOC Guidance on criminal records, Ban the Box and Fair Chance hiring laws, as well as studies showing that hiring ex-offenders has been a successful strategy for numerous employers. This topic will also cover laws that prohibit hiring based on unemployment or advertising that current employment is a job requirement. This material also reviews if a long absence from the workforce results in a derogation of skills and solutions to that problem.

Learning Objectives

• You will be able to describe unemployment discrimination and employment gaps and the reasons why employers are concerned about that issue.
• You will be able to explain how discrimination based on current employment and employment history can potentially discriminate on the basis of gender, age, or medical condition.
• You will be able to discuss the reasons to consider applicants who are unemployed or have employment gaps or criminal records.
• You will be able to review your organization’s policies and procedures to ensure compliance with the EEOC guidance on criminal records as well as Ban the Box laws in order to avoid disparate impact in hiring.