Chapter 1. Safe Recruiting Practices

Safe management begins before you hire people. How you advertise, what you write about in company publications, the questions you ask on forms, and your interview questions all talk to other people about you and your organization. Sometimes they may tell the truth, perhaps that you do illegally or unfairly discriminate or that you do pry into matters that are of no concern to you or to the organization. Other times, they say things that you may not want to say or you do not intend to communicate. In this chapter, I describe discrimination in advertising and other recruitment materials and how to prevent discriminatory language from infecting them.

Few managers today directly and openly specify discriminatory characteristics in an advertisement unless these are required by a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ). However, they identify age limits and other traits that do discriminate, and they often indirectly discriminate in subtle ways.^[*]

^[*] See also John P. Kohl and David B. Stephens, "Wanted: Recruitment Advertising That Doesn't Discriminate," Personnel, 66:2 (February 1989), pp. 18—25.