The Right Start
The hiring process varies widely. Small companies, particularly family businesses in small towns, may still do business on the basis of a promise and a handshake. Other companies have extensive procedures and paperwork. Though prospective employees often believe there are laws and regulations that govern the hiring process, legal guidelines are broad, and they target big issues like discrimination and equal opportunity. There are no laws that say you must hire the most qualified candidate for the job. Most employment laws attempt to define the ways in which a private sector company or manager can do the following:
Establish job requirements (but not what they are)
Interview applicants
Make employment opportunities available
Treat the employee on the job with respect to work hours and conditions, workplace safety, and certain other factors
Terminate employment (in some states)
Laws also require companies to treat employees in certain ways, and they may regulate such factors as benefits packages and work hours. (Chapter 18 provides information about laws and regulations that apply to the workplace.) Depending on the industry, the company's size, and the amount of bureaucracy, these requirements may be more or less flexible.
In an ideal world, a written job description defines the basic expectations that you and your company have for employee performance. This message runs consistently through advertising, interviews, and performance evaluations. How closely reality matches the ideal varies widely; many small companies do not even have job descriptions because employees perform so many tasks essential to keeping the business running.
Beyond laws are corporate policies — the internal guidelines that tell managers what they can and cannot do when it comes to hiring, evaluating, promoting, and firing employees. It is always important to start with your HR department to make sure you are acting in a responsible manner from the perspective of the law as well as complying with internal policies. Key questions to address include these:
Must you interview and consider internal applicants before seeking external applicants?
If internal applicants meet the job's basic requirements, must you hire them?
Do union contracts include stipulations and procedures for considering potential employees?
Do requirements differ for employees hired to fill vacated versus newly created positions?
Do requirements differ according to the job's classification (hourly, salaried, exempt, nonexempt, permanent, temporary)?
How can (or must) factors such as race and gender affect your selection process?
Can you decide to hire someone with less experience or fewer qualifications because that person shows an eagerness and aptitude for learning, or must you accept the candidate whose actual skills are the strongest?
Can you go through the entire interviewing process and decide that rather than hiring any of the candidates you want to post the job again?
The rules are different for public sector (government) jobs, union contracts and collective bargaining agreements, and certain other settings. In these settings, stringent details may regulate the entire process of hiring or promoting, placing any influence beyond your control.
