When Recruiting, Observe These 6 Rules to Insure Ethics

Employees are the most important resource to a corporation. Staffing process is the first step in selecting the people that will eventually constitute this important resource for the corporation. The outcome of staff recruitment therefore will significantly influence the performance and success of the corporation.

Ethics has a very important role to play during the recruitment of this precious resource. In this article, I shall concentrate the discussion on the ethical issues we should consider in the hiring process.

Law and regulations dictate that we have to be ethical in hiring process. However, ethical hiring practice goes beyond them as well. Various research studies have concluded that ethical hiring practices do result in recruiting better employees for the corporation.

It is therefore important that sound ethical rules are followed when hiring a new employee. We shall discuss six such rules:

1. Meritocracy

Applicants are to be picked based solely on merits to the firm�s requirements. The criteria to be used for measuring merits may include how relevant the expertise possess relevant to the organization�s need, how competent is the candidate in performing the job advertised for, and how well the candidate can complement the capabilities of the existing employees, etc.

If the firm were to practice any affirmative action, these considerations should be well declared in the company's recruitment and employment policy statement. �Any favored treatment towards any group should be one that is legally allowed.

While preferential treatments to certain specific group may be allowed, there should be no discrimination to people from any other group due to race, religion, gender, marital or even pregnancy status.

2. Consistency and Objectivity

Consistency in recruitment practice is very important and if there is any change in criteria, they should be stated and explained to order to avoid unnecessary claim of biasness in the recruitment process. We should be objective in our evaluation process. Objective evaluation results in the best employees being recruited while consistency ensures high morale among employees.

3. Disclosure of Relevant Information

When recruiting new employees, the candidates should be told the truth about the organization, and under no circumstance they should not be misled. For example, the candidate should be informed of any relevant information, including those not publicly known, that may materially affect the new employee�s future employment with the organization. The case of Phil McConkey highlights the danger of failing to do so. Phil was recruited without being told that the company was being taken over by a new owner. He lost his job one year after joining the new company. He sued and was awarded $10 million.

4. Truthful Recruitment Advertisement

We should not place misleading job advertisement just to get applications while we actually want to offer a different type of job contracts. For example, imagine the situation where what we really want to engage are independent contractors but not full-time salaried employees. We may choose to engage independent contractors because we do not have to burden ourselves with high wage bills for employees who do not perform well, but we will reward employees according to their performance. In this case we should be upfront with our terms and conditions. We should never get involved in any job scam.

5. Caution When Employing Staff from Organizations that have Material Dealing with Us

Organizations that have material dealing with us include our suppliers, customers and competitors. We have to be extra careful when we are considering employing one of their employees because we can get into unnecessary ethical entangles that can be very damaging to us.

When we employ somebody from our suppliers, the suppliers may feel that we have unethically poached their good employee. After all, it is through the working relationship we have with the suppliers that we can to know the quality of this employee.

When we employ somebody from our customers we can be accused of returning favor to that person. This rule applies especially when employing a former senior government employee that has an influence on the awards of contracts to an organization like yours. The case of Ms. Darleen Druyun at the Department of Defense and Mr. Michael Sears at Boeing is a good illustration of the importance of such a rule. In this case, employment favor was apparently granted by Boeing in exchange for favorable consideration for the awards of contracts by Department of Defense. Also, be careful not to employ former government employees for the purpose of lobbying for contracts from their previous government departments. At least, do not do so within the first two years of the employee leaving the government service.

It is also not very wise to employ somebody from our competitors because we can be accused of stealing trade secrets from our competitors. If that employee can pass on his previous employer�s secrets unethically, what is there to sop him from passing your trade secrets to others?

6. Courtesy and Good Public Relation Practices

Although some employees do not see it as unethical, in order to show courtesy and project good public image we should inform unsuccessful applicants of the outcome and provide any help to them to seek employment from some other relevant employers that may find them suitable. Also, if there are changes in the environment and the unsuccessful candidates may now be found suitable, they may be more inclined to respond positively when approached to offer jobs to them.

These six rules, while simple and logically, are not normally followed by many organizations in their recruitment process, leading to poor employee morale and productivity, as well as damaging law suits.

References: http://succezz.com/Articles/index.html http://jacobgan.com/PersonalDevelopment.html http://jacoblearning.com/BF/index.html

Jacob Gan PhD (Michigan) has more than 20 years of teaching experience in a university and 8 years of business/industrial experience after graduation. He writes for succezz.com, JacobGan.com, JacobEducation.com, DemystifyCancer.com, understanding-orchids.com, motivate2success.com and JacobLearning.com. He hosts Jacob.TheeLearningcentre.com, an elearning portal.

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