Federal inquiry: Jobless need not apply: Is this legal?

[upstatecajun]

The federal government has been taking a closer look at whether minorities suffer disproportionately when companies limit employment applicants to workers who already have jobs.

Fifty-four members of Congress asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in November to investigate whether job openings that bar the unemployed have an adverse effect on minority groups.

They were responding to news stories about ads that explicitly required that applicants "must be currently employed" or stated that "no unemployed candidates will be considered at all," according to their letter to the commission.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2011/03/13/jobless-need-not-apply-is-this-legal.html?sid=101








http://www.liberalohioan.com/index.html

[Pacifist Patriot]

1. Can someone explain to me why a company would refuse to consider candidates...

not currently employed? In my naivete, I honestly don't get it.

[Turbineguy]

2. These unemployed people

have been living high off the hog on their unemployment benefits, drinking champagne, eating caviar and driving fast cars. Suddenly having to become a corporate slave at lousy wages is considered too much of a cultural shock.

[Recursion]

3. Because people assume the good workers would have been kept

If Alice employs Bob and Charles, and she lets Charles go, that is going to make me wonder if I would rather hire Bob. When you get hundreds of resumes for an open position you end up using some pretty crude metrics to winnow it down.

[Xithras]

10. There's another reason for it.

In some jobs, including IT, employers are generally most interested in your past 2-4 years of work to determine your current skillset. It's great that you have 15 years of experience, and that will definitely work in your favor when it comes time to select for interviews, but the initial filter is to look at your last few years of work and determine whether you've been working with technologies that are compatible with the positions they're hiring for.

If a company is most interested in your past three years work, and you've spent half of that unemployed, you're dropped to the bottom of the stack right away. Your skills are immediately going to be considered "stale" when compared to someone who has been working in the field without interruption for the past few years.

This same phenomena can be found in other fields as well. Marketing is a biggie, right off the top of my head.

[MineralMan]

4. It's a crude filtering mechanism, designed to cut down the

number of applications and make the lives of HR people easier. HR blows, for the most part. As people who are in management at the lower levels of most corporation know, HR knows squat about hiring productive people for specific jobs. HR is about HR, not jobs.

[jwirr]

5. The jobless are being blamed for the economic mess the business

world caused. How do we turn this back on them? It is their mess - we are the victims.

[Yo_Mama]

6. I don't think it's legal

For example, age discrimination is not legal. Obviously younger persons who are graduating will be unemployed.

Since the unemployment rates for most minority populations are distinctly higher than the average, this measure de facto discriminates against minorities in many areas.

Still, they may be able to stop the companies from advertising this, but HR will still throw all the applications away. Best thing is to list private activity (you weren't unemployed, you were self-employed).

[crikkett]

7. while they're at it, let's also ban drug screening and credit checks

it's time to put some dignity and respect back in the workplace.

[upstatecajun]

8. yes

please

[themadstork]

9. I don't understand how the credit rating Demigods are legal

But then I also don't understand the Demigods themselves. They probably hate me, as I can never fucking remember to pay my utilities on time.