Pre-employment screening is vital for organizations looking to hire talent with the required skills and personality for an open position. This process minimizes recruitment risks and helps companies build a team that is competent and can collaborate to produce efficiency.
Typically, pre-employment screening includes background checks, skills evaluations, and interviews that show the company who the candidate is and how qualified they are. But while gathering this information about the candidate, recruiters may breach pre-employment screening laws.
Before applying pre-employment screening to your hiring process, you must first understand its laws and regulations. So, follow along as we explain how to navigate compliance and legal considerations in pre-employment screening.
Understanding the Regulatory Landscape
Pre-employment screening regulations govern the use of tests, assessments, and background-checking techniques during hiring. These laws guide how employers evaluate candidates’ skills, backgrounds, and personalities.
These screening regulations protect the candidate’s privacy even as employers evaluate their fit for a role. If a company breaches these rules, it stands at risk of fines, lawsuits, or expensive legal actions. Safe to say, the penalties for lack of assessment compliance could leave a sizable dent in the company’s image — and wallet.
Several regulations guide pre-employment screening, including laws from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and accommodations for disabilities. Beyond these laws, companies must follow other pre-employment testing guidelines to ensure compliance in their recruitment. Let’s discuss some of them below.
1. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sets regulations guiding the civil rights of candidates to receive fair treatment by companies during recruitment. These laws demand that companies offer equal employment opportunities to candidates irrespective of age, race, or background.
At its core, the EEOC’s laws aim to eliminate bias in recruitment. This prevents companies from treating candidates unfairly, thus promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Although it might not seem like it, EEOC violations are quite common among companies. In fact, in 2023, the EEOC sued Tesla for tolerating racial discrimination in its workplace. And that’s not all. Aaron Thomas Company Inc. and Supreme Staffing faced the heat of penalties by the EEOC for denying employment to black workers.
For each of these lawsuits, the companies had to pay compensatory and punitive damages to the affected parties.
2. Accommodations for disabilities
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers must make adequate provisions for candidates with disabilities. This means the organization’s screening techniques should have candidate accessibility solutions for those with physical disabilities.
These regulations ensure that organizations don’t rule out candidates solely because they are disabled. Thus, candidates with the required skills and experience should receive an equal shot at any open position. If a company doesn’t comply with these laws, the regulatory body could take legal action against them.
For example, in 2017, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority faced a lawsuit for failing to hire a candidate because they had a disability. Also, Cloudbeds received significant legal backlash from the EEOC due to their failure to hire a deaf applicant even though he was qualified for the role.
3. Informed consent
The Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) directs that employers obtain a written and signed consent document before performing candidate background checks. Companies can do this by adding the information to the job post or sending it to them as a separate document.
Implementing informed consent ensures the candidates know and agree with the company’s pre-employment evaluation measures. So, if they’re uncomfortable with the screening process, they can opt out of it.
A couple of companies have faced penalties because they did not obtain informed consent before running background checks. Some of these companies are big names in their industries. For instance, in 2013, Publix received a lawsuit for running a background check without the candidates’ consent. As a result, it faced fines worth $6.8 million.
4. Reliability and validity in pre-employment testing
Reliability and validity in pre-employment skill testing ensure that tests companies administer to their candidates during recruitment are relevant to the role. This means the questions in the test should correspond to the responsibilities attached to the role. Validity in testing also requires companies to only test candidates based on the level of proficiency the open role requires.
Using valid tests in recruitment reduces bias and bolsters fairness while ensuring that the company hires the best candidate. As such, during recruitment, companies must double-check that their pre-employment testing methods are valid and reliable before applying them.
Organizations that fail to perform validity studies on their assessments face various penalties, like Target did in 2015. The retail corporation suffered a legal blow and faced charges of invalid testing and discrimination, for which it had to suffer penalties and fines.
5. Privacy and confidentiality
During recruitment, the company must keep candidate information private after obtaining it. This means that whatever information the employers find while performing background checks or candidate screening procedures should remain confidential.
Regulatory bodies like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforce these privacy laws to protect candidates. These regulations give the candidate control of the information the company collects about them.
Additionally, in scenarios where third parties are involved in information sharing, the hiring company must implement measures to ensure secure data handling.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission als enforces regulations regarding the privacy and confidentiality of information. In fact, in 2022, the body issued a lawsuit to a tractor supply company for disclosing an employee’s private information. So, it’s safe to say that privacy and confidentiality of candidate information are two crucial factors to consider during hiring.
Vervoe’s Compliance Features
Navigating the complexities of pre-employment testing might initially appear daunting. However, Vervoe simplifies this process, ensuring you remain within the boundaries of legal requirements. Below are some of Vervoe’s exceptional compliance features:
1. Bias-free testing software
Vervoe provides a platform to test your candidates without worrying about bias or unfairness. Our intuitive AI-powered platform is certified as bias-free by the NYC bias audit and thus compliant with NYC law LL 144.
Utilizing Vervoe to screen your candidates empowers you to assess them based on the same metrics. Ultimately, this enables you to hire based on merit and skill, irrespective of race, background, or physical qualities.
2. Candidate and organization information protection
Vervoe is committed to protecting user privacy, so we prioritize securing both the candidates’ and organizations’ information. To this end, our platform complies with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This means that Vervoe only collects and uses information via legal, accountable, and safe means.
In addition, our comprehensive privacy policy governs how we collect, use, and share user information. Additionally, our policy ensures careful data handling if we need to disclose your information while providing our services.
3. Adverse Impact Prevention & EEOC Compliance
Adverse impact occurs during recruitment when specific groups of people are negatively affected by a decision. Although this impact could be intentional or unintentional, it still causes discrimination of the individuals in the group. Not to mention, it may be a constant factor throughout the hiring process, reducing the quality of your hire and affecting the candidates’ experience.
To avoid this, Vervoe consistently reviews and analyzes its platform and testing tools according to EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) regulations. In doing so, we ensure our AI doesn’t score people in protected classes lower than average at scale. Vervoe can also collate candidate data from this process and provide a detailed report at stipulated intervals (for example, your quarterly business review). We do this via the EEOC form, which you can toggle on in your assessment settings.
4. Reliable personalized grading
At Vervoe, we believe that no two candidates are the same. As such, the grading techniques for pre-employment screening should be personalized. With personalized grading, you can gauge candidates’ performance while considering their interaction with the test.
Our powerful AI personalizes grading by letting you set specific criteria for a role. Then, by using smart algorithms, it grades each candidate’s responses according to the set benchmarks. So, you get a personalized evaluation for each candidate, focusing on the skills you seek without risking unfair recruitment.
5. Validated pre-employment tests
Our skill assessment library is equipped with over 300 validated tests tailored to evaluate specific skills ranging from soft to technical skills. Consequently, you can rest assured that no matter what role you’re hiring for, Vervoe has a valid test for you. Some of these tests include:
- Software developer skills assessment
- English proficiency assessment
- Sales representative skills assessment
- Product strategist skills assessment
- Legal assistant skills assessment
Vervoe also allows you to create and customize an assessment using multiple tests relevant to the open role. For example, if you’re hiring a customer support agent, you can combine communication, technical, and language skills tests with our assessment builder. This way, you can comprehensively evaluate candidates and measure their abilities.
Best Practices for Legal Compliance
Aside from safeguarding your company from legal risks, compliance fosters a work environment of fairness and equality. As such, it is crucial to implement legal compliance as effectively as possible. In this section, we’ll discuss some best practices for implementing legal compliance:
1. Regularly review your screening policies and procedures
Before embarking on a new recruitment process, always ensure your company is up to date with pre-employment screening regulations. To do this, you must regularly review and update your screening policies and procedures.
It’s also a good idea to have legal experts on your team to update you on these regulations. This way, you can ensure your company has a lower risk of legal entanglements regarding pre-employment assessment.
2. Always use reliable and compliant screening platforms
Leveraging candidate screening platforms that adhere to screening laws protects you from legal risks during recruitment. In the long run, this saves you from extra costs and safeguards your company’s image.
One of the major indicators of compliance with screening laws is the absence of hiring bias in your screening platform. The platform would typically have an audit certificate to show that it’s free of bias. This ensures fair candidate assessment and allows for diversity in your recruitment efforts.
3. Provide regular training to HR staff on screening laws
In addition to updating your recruitment policies, you should regularly train your HR staff to familiarize them with pre-employment screening laws. This acts as extra protection, reducing the chances of legal penalties due to a breach of hiring regulations.
It’s best to perform these training sessions as often as possible. However, you can intensify the training sessions once you plan a new recruitment phase.
Case Studies and Success Stories
Pairing the effectiveness of skills testing with the safety of using a compliant screening platform is beneficial in more ways than one. To this effect, here are some of Vervoe’s screening compliance success stories:
1. Consensys
Consensys, a leading blockchain and Web3 software company, was on the quest to enhance its candidate evaluation. As an organization receiving hundreds of applications for various positions, it needed a robust but thorough platform to assess technical skills. With Vervoe, Consensys was able to build the assessment framework that suited their needs.
Vervoe helped Consensys engineer a skills assessment that incorporated both technical and soft skill tests. This helped them strike a balance between both skill classes by including a mix of question types like video, audio, and multiple-choice questions. In addition, this system lets them evaluate the candidates thoroughly and find those that best fit the role.
2. Colorado Coalition for the Homeless
For the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), assessing their employees’ internal mobility potential was a hassle. The major challenges they faced were accurately determining who was ready for promotion and building a fair method to assess their candidates. Thankfully, they found the perfect solution to these problems with Vervoe.
With Vervoe, they bolstered objective, accurate, and bias-free pre-employment testing. In addition, Vervoe helped CCH ensure their candidates had a seamless testing experience. Candidates so far have attested to Vervoe’s fairness, accounting for our platform’s reliability.
3. G4S
One of the major problems that G4S faced was hiring based primarily on intuition rather than proven skill. To this effect, it searched for a pre-employment testing platform to improve its hiring efficiency and reduce bias. With Vervoe, a lasting solution to this issue was found.
Vervoe has helped G4S streamline hiring and reduce bias by eradicating intuitive hiring and introducing skill-based testing. Plus, with our reliable, valid, and compliant tests, G4S could confidently hire the best for the job.
Prioritizing Legal Compliance with Vervoe
Ultimately, pre-employment assessments have numerous benefits. However, if you don’t implement them properly, it can do more harm than good. For this reason, you should prioritize legal compliance when hiring. One way to do this is by utilizing a compliant testing platform like Vervoe.
By leveraging Vervoe’s compliance features and applying the best practices we’ve covered, you can ensure your recruitment is always legally compliant. So, are you eager to elevate your compliance strategy and align with screening regulations? Discover how by scheduling a demo with Vervoe – your first step toward flawless compliance and recruitment excellence!
