Compliance refers to the ability to adhere to established laws and regulations. When it comes to companies and hiring, compliance mainly involves avoiding discriminatory practices. While this may sound simple, it can become complicated.
Fortunately, applicant tracking system (ATS) software can help with recruitment compliance.
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Why Recruitment Compliance Is Tricky
Laws and regulations are constantly changing and recruitment laws are no exception. For businesses with a smaller HR department or a single HR manager, it can be difficult to keep up with all laws and ensure that proper systems are in place to maintain compliance. Compiling reports and keeping tabs on the reasons for rejection for each candidate that doesn’t get hired may be beyond one person’s abilities when done manually.
Staying Up To Date with Laws
ATS software often comes with a reference library containing information about laws that apply to the specific business based on size, location, and other details. This library can help keep HR professionals up to date with laws and can also provide insights into how best to comply with those laws. ATS software is regularly updated to ensure the most up to date information about laws and compliance.
Forming Well Worded Job Postings
Job postings are the first defense against compliance violations. By clearly communicating to applicants which qualifications are required for the job, organizations set an expectation and protect themselves from discrimination claims if a candidate isn’t selected for the job based on a failure to meet these requirements. This makes it easy to document why candidates whose qualifications match the outlined criteria well have been moved forward in the hiring process.
Using ATS Software for Interview Advice
Most ATS software comes with recommendations for standard interview questions to ask to ensure a good fit with the company, assess ethics, and evaluate values alignment. Some ATS software also comes with advice about what questions to avoid. By staying on track with questions, companies hire for success and stay away from questions that could be construed as a type of discrimination or compliance violation.
Avoiding Bias with ATS Software
Interviewers are human, so it’s hard to completely remove bias from the hiring process. Interviewers may favor a candidate’s personality or relate to one candidate more than another and this may influence their perspective more than qualifications. Unfortunately, this type of favoritism may yield a discrimination lawsuit.
ATS software often provides candidate scorecards and other functionality that can help to avoid bias in hiring. By supplying measurable data to utilize in hiring, ATS software helps organizations to prevent subconscious biases from influencing hiring.
Reporting Functionality and Compliance
As candidates move through the interview process, ATS software generally allows hiring personnel to make notes, add tags, and rate candidates. These notes, tags, and scores can be valuable if a candidate feels that discrimination took place, when in fact it did not. Having the ability to recall candidate profiles and provide reporting about why certain candidates were rejected can protect companies.
ATS software can be useful when it comes to compliance. By using the system in certain ways, companies can avoid costly and painful compliance violations and penalties.