Category: Recruiting

Recruiting is changing at a rapid pace. Some organizations are abandoning traditional methods for social media; some think software can do a better job than people.

Should You Offer Trainees a Bonus to Quit? Zappos Does

Special from SHRM Las Vegas Focus on your culture, and the profits will follow, says Zappo’s CEO and author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose Tony Hsieh. And the culture at Zappos is all about customer service. The company, known primarily for its Internet shoe business, does very little advertising, Hsieh […]

Special Issues in Conducting Workplace Investigations

The truth is rarely pure and never simple (Oscar Wilde once said), and nowhere is that more true than when investigating workplace allegations of harassment, theft, discrimination, safety violations or substance abuse. Here are a few tricky situations that pose challenges investigators need to understand so as not to let the process derail. The Reluctant […]

Can You Base Hiring Decisions on Information from Social Media Sites?

In yesterday’s Advisor, attorneys Chad Richter and Cynthia Sandoval discussed discipline for blogging. Today, they weigh in on hiring decisions based on social media information, plus we introduce a very useful collection of job descriptions. One of the most controversial questions in HR today is whether to rely on social media sites for information on […]

The Top 5 Questions Before You Discipline for Blogging

Special from SHRM Las Vegas It’s not easy to comply when technology changes every day and the laws are archaic, say attorneys Chad Richter and Cynthia Sandoval. But that’s no excuse—employers have to deal in spite of the confusion. The two Jackson-Lewis attorneys (Richter from the Omaha office and Sandoval from the Newport Beach, California […]

The FLSA Won’t Help You Because You Don’t Work Here

If you find out during the hiring process that an applicant blew the FLSA whistle on his or her former employer, you can probably pull the plug on that applicant, EVEN if you already sent him or her an offer letter (at least in the 4th Circuit). The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled […]

Office of Special Counsel Aims at Fed Agencies with USERRA Project

A new project adds another layer of bureaucratic oversight about which federal employers should be aware when dealing with employees exercising their rights to job protection under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has begun a three-year demonstration project expanding its role in enforcing military servicemember […]

Social Media and Hiring: Beware of Other Legal Risks

Yesterday, we noted that because of anti-discrimination and credit reporting laws, when it comes to using social media to gain intel on prospective employees, HR professionals cannot just act like kids in the candy store. Why, they can’t even act like kids in the candy aisle at the grocery, because there are even more legal […]

Social Media: Used Not Just to ‘Friend’, but to Hire

“Should employers be allowed to screen job candidates based on their online behavior even if their actions are not pertinent to t he listed job?” That was the query today from Washington Post financial columnist Michelle Singletary. For human resources (HR) staff, this is not a theoretical question; it’s a very real struggle. The brave […]

SHRM 2011: Understanding Generation Y

As I noted in an earlier post, I skipped out early from a session at SHRM’s 63rd annual conference that was just an overview of global trends, but the speaker did say something in passing that served me well in the next session I jetted off to: This is the first time in history that […]

Attending SHRM 2011 and Wishing I Could Be Cloned

I’m at the 63rd annual conference for the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) in Las Vegas, where I’m learning not only the ins and outs of HR, but the need for cloning. There’s so much I want to hear about — technology and HR, the latest on employee benefit issues such as health care […]