![]() ![]() He said an increasing number of them are asking him to evaluate new software tools.īigger data sets can raise the risks of violating the law by increasing the number of statistical relationships that could unwittingly screen out protected groups, he said. Matthew Camardella, a partner at employment law firm Jackson Lewis LLP, specializes in determining whether companies are in compliance with equal opportunity laws. If a hiring practice is challenged in court as discriminatory, a company must show the criteria it is using are proven to predict success in the job. Practices that even unintentionally filter out older or minority applicants can be illegal under federal equal opportunity laws. ”ĭata-based hiring can expose companies to legal risk. Richfield said its workers’ comp claims have fallen 68% since it has used the test, and it now requires managers to use it to eliminate unsuitable applicants.”If the person scores low on the test, we don’t make an exception for that person,” said General Manager Fred Vezzetti. Those who score poorly are considered high disability risks. The goal is to gauge an applicant’s emotional stability, work ethic and attitude toward drug and alcohol. It asks applicants to pick between statements like “When I’m working for a company I take pride in making it as profitable as possible” and “I’m only concerned with how well I can do financially in my job,” then rate how strongly they agree or disagree. Richfield Management LLC, a Flint, Mich., waste-disposal firm that employs 200 garbage collectors, was looking for ways to screen out applicants who were likely to get hurt and abuse workers’ compensation.Ībout a year and a half ago, Richfield turned to an online test developed by a small firm called Exemplar Research Group. It isn’t just big companies that are turning to software for hiring help. “Even at the best companies there’s still a lot of guessing.” “The initial thing companies like Evolv are looking at is people as they get hired, but over the years this can help companies pick who to advance, who to promote,” he said. and an Evolv director, said software will supplement, if not supplant, many of the personnel decisions long made by instinct and intuition. Laszlo Bock, a senior vice president at Google Inc. Above, Xerox service agent Lance LaRosa in Rochester, N.Y. Xerox leaves hiring for its 48,700 call-center jobs to software. Companies peddling a statistical approach to hiring say they can improve results by reducing the influence of a manager’s biases. Managers who go with their gut might get it right sometimes, but their hunches generally have little value in predicting how someone will perform on the job. Depending on who decides, what gets candidates hired can vary wildly-from academic achievement to work experience to appearance. Though hiring is a crucial business function, conventional methods are remarkably short on rigor, experts say. ![]() Xerox accepts some yellows if it thinks it can train them, but mostly hires greens. Then the program spits out a score: red for low potential, yellow for medium potential or green for high potential. He or she tends not to be overly inquisitive or empathetic, but is creative.Īpplicants for the job take a 30-minute test that screens them for personality traits and puts them through scenarios they might encounter on the job. The data say that person lives near the job, has reliable transportation and uses one or more social networks, but not more than four. By putting applicants through a battery of tests and then tracking their job performance, Evolv has developed a model for the ideal call-center worker. Xerox is being advised by Evolv Inc., a San Francisco start-up that helps companies hire and manage hourly workers. acquired job-applicant tracking system company Taleo for $1.9 billion in February, and Germany’s SAP AG bought SuccessFactors, which specializes in performance tracking, recruiting and compensation, for $3.4 billion in December. agreed to pay $1.3 billion for Kenexa Corp., which uses data analysis to help companies recruit and retain workers. Last month, International Business Machines Corp. Globally, spending on so-called talent-management software rose to $3.8 billion in 2011, up 15% from 2010, according to research firm Gartner.īig tech companies are jockeying to serve the growing market. The new hiring tools are part of a broader effort to gather and analyze employee data. ![]()
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