Despite the importance of interviews, the majority of interviewers have not prepared for or structured the interview process. Based on TriNet’s experience, the odds of selecting the best candidate on the basis of an unstructured interview are no better than random selection. 

Follow these guidelines to make your interviews as productive as possible:

Schedule in advance who else is going to interview the candidate. Coordinate the efforts of your interview team by deciding who’s going to ask what.

Plan your questions around the five or six factors that you believe will be most important for successful job performance, whether that be skills or personal talents.

Prepare a form that includes the questions you want to ask. This document is an excellent defense against claims of illegal discrimination. Be consistent in the questions you ask. If you have multiple interviewers, they should be asking the same line of questions for each candidate.

Take a few moments to review the candidate’s resume and application for employment before calling the candidate in for the interview, even if you have to make him or her wait a short time. Reading it during the interview tells the candidate you are unprepared.

During the interview, make sure your questions are open-ended. Ask for examples; try to spot patterns of success (or failure).

Remember during the entire interview process (before, during, and after) to avoid making any statements that could be construed as promises concerning the job, future pay, advancement opportunities, or benefits. There are a growing number of legal cases that have found that statements made in interviews were oral contracts of employment or even fraudulent inducement.

And, of course, make sure your questions are legal. Know what you can and can’t ask.  (Examples coming to this very blog soon!)

On Thursday, July 24, 2008 a U.S. House committee passed a bill named the “Paycheck Fairness Act” that intends to address gender-based wage discrimination in the marketplace. However, the bill constitutes an unprecedented expansion of the Equal Pay Act, and it would expose employers to more class action lawsuits and unlimited liability for punitive and compensatory damage awards.

The entire House is scheduled to vote on the bill this week. week of July 28 - August 1. TriNet fundamentally believes in and advocates equal pay and treatment for men and women in the workplace, but this bill is a textbook example of good intentions paving the road to...well, you know. Here’s why.

Background

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is part of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and it prohibits wage discrimination on the basis of gender in the workplace by requiring equal pay for “equal work.” In other words, the Equal Pay Act mandates that jobs requiring comparable functions, skills, effort and responsibility in similar working conditions must compensate equally. The law allows employers to make exceptions based on the performance and seniority of employees. Employers that violate the Equal Pay Act may incur back pay, liquidated damages, and attorney’s fees.

Some policymakers and stakeholders have long contended that the Equal Pay Act is not sufficient to remedy wage discrimination, and certainly on its own, they may be right. These proponents cite that the average full-time, working woman earns about 77 cents for every dollar earned by a full-time, working man. While this wage differential remains an important workplace issue (and there are many causes for this disparity), debate continues over whether the differential is attributable to discrimination or the result of legitimate economic factors such as education, skill, experience, or tenure. Employers frequently argue that once economic factors are accounted for, the wage differential shrinks considerably, and in some areas ceases to exist.

More radical equal pay advocates contend that the best way to address wage discrimination is through a mandated “comparable worth” pay system. Comparable worth pay systems require the government, rather than the private market, to determine employees wages. Congress explicitly rejected comparable worth during the original Equal Pay Act debate—when wage disparities between women and men were greater—because it would mandate the same pay for completely different jobs. Furthermore, courts have repeatedly declared that the Equal Pay Act does not require a comparable worth system.

The Proposed Legislation

The Paycheck Fairness Act bill was introduced by Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), and has 230 cosponsors in the House of
Representatives. Specifically, the bill would:

• facilitate class action lawsuits by repealing the requirement that employees must give their written consent to become a party in a gender discrimination class action,
• lift the caps on compensatory or punitive damages for which employers would be liable, in addition to current liability for back …
  
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A press release we just did discusses how blog and social networking sites continue to rise in popularity.  But TriNet has noticed that business owners are starting to worry about the impact to their company reputation when employees blur the lines between the personal and the professional.  We’ve seen a lot more companies seek advice in regards to navigating their employees’ use of online publishing mediums and addressing the use of company information in personal blogs and on web sites.

While most companies have guidelines on items including employee codes of conduct, and e-mail and Internet usage, most do not have a policy that includes guidelines related to employee blogging and social networking – leaving themselves vulnerable to unwanted company knowledge and criticism circulating on the Web.

Here are a few questions to ask when it comes to setting appropriate online policies:

How is this new online publishing medium impacting my HR policies?

What are appropriate policies for my company regarding employee blogging and social networking?

As an employer, what rights do I have if an employee blogs criticism about my company?

Can I set limitations on blogging, disclosure of confidential information or the posting of other subject matter?

Where is the line, both legally and ethically, between what is considered appropriate or inappropriate disclosure?

When can blogging or posts be grounds for disciplinary action or possible termination?

When it comes to social networking, the Pew Internet & American Life Project states that membership on social networking utilities is exploding: 300 percent growth on Facebook, Bebo and Tagged. MySpace now has more than 115 million members, and LinkedIn is one of the fastest growing sites boasting more than 24 million users.

The Pew Foundation also suggests that when it comes to blogs, the average blog reader reads six blogs a day and spends 10 hours per week reading blogs. Of the 72 percent of U.S. adults who use the internet regularly, 45 percent are creating personal content for others to see and 32 percent actually consider themselves to be a “broadcaster” of their own media.

Due to these statistics, we’ve started offering the following tips to small and medium-sized businesses:

Get to know some of the popular networking sites – start by asking your employees, family and friends what sites they frequent – to determine which ones might pose a threat.

Consider doing your own research to determine what is being said about your company online and on what sites.

Revisit and update employee handbooks and code of conduct policies to include guidelines regarding employees’ web personas.

Take into account that any new policy will need to be communicated to employees through training at every opportunity.

Measure the use of company property – work time, computers and Internet connections – being used to manage personal/professional profiles on social networking sites and to update personal blogs.

Bear in mind, employers need to be very careful …

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A colleague once told me about a time she was hired, and her manager told her “Here’s what you need to know in order to work with me.” And then she listed about ten likes and dislikes, habits, and annoyances.  Her message was: “In order to be my employee, you need to fit into the mold that I’ve carefully constructed for myself.”

Something tells me that’s not going to work with the millennials, the up-and-coming generation that only knows Paula Abdul from American Idol and who live and breathe the Internet like electronic oxygen.  It’s funny how many media inquiries I’ve been receiving about reporters wanting to get a handle on the latest ways to deal with the millennials, especially in the context of the baby boomers who never left the workplace.  I get questions such as:

Are the millennials really as demanding as everyone says?

Are the baby boomers really grizzled, embittered veterans who refuse to play with the new people?

How can America remain competitive if these generations keep clashing in the workplace?

Are the millennials really as tech-savvy as everyone says? Can you physically see their cybernetic implants?

Okay, I may have exaggerated a few of those questions for comic effect. But not by much.

A lot of these stereotypes aren’t true.  I’ve met baby boomers who can practically program the entire Internet if they want, and I’ve met so-called millennials who just want to plant themselves in one place and grow a career.

Nonetheless, there’s no doubt that “one size fits all management” is as dead as dialup modems.  The best of the management books I’ve read lately, First, Break All the Rules, offers tips and techniques for supporting different kinds of employees.  The book suggests focusing less on traditional employee criteria such as “knowledge” and “skills,” and rather emphasizing the “four keys” of excellent management: finding the right fit for employees, focusing on strengths, defining the right results, and selecting for talent.

Similarly, TriNet’s own leadership training course draws from the popular Situational Leadership model, and it emphasizes adopting one’s management style to fit the needs and capabilities of each employee.  Whether that style requires being directive, acting as a coach, being supportive, or simply delegating, it explains how to identify the situation, evaluate the employee, and choose the appropriate tactic.

Multiple generations in the workplace is a good thing: different approaches to common problems offer a source of strength and renewed focus.  But there’s no way to deploy the same management style from person to person, if ever that possibility actually existed.  Each employee has his or her own identity and needs, and the trick is to work with those unique identifiers in order to focus that person on high performance.  Do that and it won’t matter whether you’re dealing with Generation X, Y, or Q.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) has released its latest annual study identifying the best and worst legal environments for businesses, based on survey responses from in-house general counsel and other senior corporate litigators to determine the fairness and reasonableness of state court liability systems in America.

If you’ve done any litigation in both state and federal courts, this won’t come as a huge surprise to you: less than half (41%) of respondents rated the reasonableness and fairness of state court systems as “Excellent” or “Pretty good” while 55% rated them as “Fair” or “Poor.” That’s more generous than my own experience.

Here are the best and worst states in terms of “Lawsuit Climate” for 2008:

10 Best States [There were some surprises here for me.]
1) Delaware
2) Nebraska
3) Maine
4) Indiana
5) Utah
6) Virginia
7) Iowa
8) Vermont
9) Colorado
10) Kansas
According to ILR, for the seventh consecutive year, Delaware ranks first among all 50 in the fairness of its litigation environment. That’s one good reason why TriNet uses Delaware as its choice of law forum state.

10 Worst States [Some of this may surprise you, but alas, some of it definitely won’t.]
41) Texas
42) Florida
43) South Carolina
44) California
45) Hawaii
46) Illinois
47) Alabama
48) Mississippi
49) Louisiana
50) West Virginia

ILR reports that “although its raw score in the study has improved,” West Virginia is ranked 50th for the third consecutive year, the rankings deem the state’s legal climate as “the worst in the country.” So much for “almost heaven.”

Bringing people on board is one of the most important things that you do as employer...and it also represents one of the biggest compliance minefields.  Here’s a couple of tips to keep in mind.

1. Use more than one recruitment source or method.
If you rely on only one recruitment source or method, you may be in violation of equal employment opportunity principles. Courts have given judgments against employers who only hire by word-of-mouth or fail to give consideration to walk-in applicants.

2.Make sure your hiring documents are legal.
Forms that include popular characters from classic Warner Brother cartoons are probably not usable. But in addition to those rather obvious warning signs, forms have to follow certain state and regulatory rules to the letter. Get some help in ensuring that you’re using the correct ones.

3. Set up an applicant tracking system.
If you have to defend against a discrimination claim, one of your best protections is a well-organized applicant tracking system. This system can be used to account for all candidates who have applied for a position. This is also a useful tool in tracking key hiring statistics such as how many applicants you’re getting for each position, where the candidates are coming from, and what constitutes your cost per hire and time to fill.

4. Train your interviewers.
Don’t assume your managers know how to interview. Make sure everyone involved in conducting interviews knows what questions to ask, and (perhaps more importantly) what questions shouldn’t be asked. (Which will be the subject of an upcoming blog post, so don’t fret.)

5. Ensure your tests are valid.
Whether and how to use tests should be very carefully considered. They must be valid predictors of the applicant’s success at performing the job applied for and nothing more. If you use tests, be sure they are reliable, valid, and consistently administered. If testing is used, all applicants for the same job must be tested without exception. Testing is a complex subject, and it often requires expert advice.

6. Interviewer notes.
Don’t write comments of any kind on the candidate’s paperwork (for example, resume, application, or background screening forms). A manager’s stray note about a candidate’s age, for example, can be used to support a claim of discrimination. Instead, reviewers and interviewers should use an evaluation form rather than free-form notes. This evaluation form should be the same one used for all candidates being interviewed for a particular position.

7. Base hiring decisions on job requirements.
Evaluate candidates solely on their ability to perform the job—their skills, knowledge, and ability to do the work. Don’t make assumptions about what they can and/or can’t do; find out.

In short: Eliminate considerations that have nothing to do with competence. That’s all EEO legislation is really trying to do.  Of course, being government legislation, it …

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The Commonwealth Fund released an updated study recently, indicating that the number of Americans who are underinsured--i.e., their insurance does not adequately protect them from high medical expenses--has risen dramatically, As of 2007, some 25 million adults are underinsured, up a whopping 60% from 2003. According to the study, the trend is even worse for the middle class. For adults with income above 200% of the federal poverty level [about $40,000 per year for a family], the underinsured rate nearly tripled since 2003.

These are disturbing trends, because they have a direct impact on whether people get care when they need it. More than half of the underinsured [and 68% of the uninsured] went without basic care, including seeing a doctor when sick, getting a prescription filled, or obtaining follow-up tests or treatment.

When you think about it, the sole purpose of most insurance is to protect us from disastrous consequences of unforeseen events [mind you, that’s not the same as “unforeseeable”; as a category, we all know that most of us will at some point face difficult health or accident circumstances]. health insurance is somewhat different, because it is or was intended to make it affordable to obtain basic health care as well. But having insurance that is inadequate to the task arguably makes the situation worse. And there is no question that part of the blame for this problem rests with what might be called the “benefits design community.” In response to rising health care and insurance costs, many insurers, brokers, and employers are deploying insurance plans that on their face are not horribly expensive, but in their structure provide less protection against increasing care costs. So, employers can appear to be keeping costs under control, because the premium increases are modest. But the plan design is such that the cost for which the insured is responsible increases dramatically as a ratio of their income. This produces the scenario where people have coverage, but it is not meaningful from the perspective of making sure that they can afford to get care.

TriNet received a nice mention over at the Ask the VC blog, where Jason Mendelson answers the question: “What kind of benefits can I expect working at a startup?”

Jason works at Mobius Venture Capital, a VC firm based in Boulder, Colorado.  Mobius has not only started up several companies with TriNet, but eventually became a customer itself.  Jason asked one of our Sales Directors, Dan Cutler, to weigh in on the answer to what kind of benefits structure is typically offered by VC-backed firms.

It’s a fun mention, and it’s good advice.  Many small companies don’t necessarily need to worry about a high-end benefits package, because the fate of their business doesn’t necessarily rest in the quality of their people--the intellectual capital and business acumen that they bring to the table. But for companies that do--many of which are equity-financed--the “people” part of the equation is indispensable. And that means bringing in a benefits package that’s comparable to those offered by larger firms.

People have been writing about the telecommuting trend for years, but a sea change may be in the offing now that gas prices have skyrocketed over $4.00 a gallon.  Employees are going to say, hey, we’ve got this fancy new invention called the Internet, as well as a cutting-edge tool called the telephone, and that means there’s no need to burn up the remains of dead dinosaurs in order to do a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.

The cost savings are potentially tremendous for everyone. Kris Dunn at the Human Capitalist points to a study that suggests the federal government alone, with a greater emphasis on telecommuting for its employees, could realize $13.9 billion savings in commuting costs annually and eliminate 21.5 billion pounds of pollutants out of the environment each year.

TriNet’s human capital team works with telecommuting cultures all the time.  Our customers are more geared towards it because they’re already administering payroll and benefits over the web--so many of them expect and anticipate frequent telecommuting from their employees (many of which live in different states than their company’s main office location).

Of course, it requires a bit of planning in order to ensure a successful telecommuting arrangement.  Only certain types of jobs are good fits, and even those may require a certain amount of face time.  Putting an engineer alone in his living room for a year--and having him only talk to his team via instant messenger--may result in substandard output depending on the personalities involved.  And the company itself needs to support its telecommuters and not implicitly penalize them for literally phoning it in during meetings.  The company also needs to provide a secure I.T. infrastructure for transmitted files and emails.

But there’s an upside to all this: if you take the time to develop a stable, well thought-out telecommuting program, you’ve suddenly given yourself a major competitive edge from a talent standpoint.  It could end up being a powerful and relatively low-cost way to retain the employees you want to keep, as well as attract desirable candidates who may get better offers elsewhere.  And that may almost be worth the sticker shock at the gas pump.

My team recently released a report called “The Power of an Employment Brand: HR Trends in 2008.” Although we worked on it earlier in the year, we had already recognized that the economic horizon was beginning to darken with storm clouds, and our research reflects that shift in the business landscape.  As Jack’s post below indicates, however, the turbulence in the economy hasn’t necessarily affected the kinds of high-end industries that TriNet tends to work with--such as technology and professional service firms. These companies still critically need to attract and retain top talent, because top talent always has the option to go work elsewhere.

From the report itself, which summarizes the responses from nearly 400 executives in small and medium-sized companies:

“Amid recent dire predictions of an economic recession, employers are increasingly concerned about attracting and retaining high-quality employees. This is because despite a 70 percent probability for a recession in 2008, top talent will remain in high demand and qualified candidates will continue to have many career opportunities available to them.

Survey results show that the top business concern in 2008 is recruiting and retaining talent (31 percent), followed by revenue (26 percent). At this time last year, increasing revenue was a higher priority for respondents than was attracting and retaining top talent. Given growing talent concerns in the U.S., this increase in anxiety about recruitment and retention is not surprising. Organizations realize that profitability will occur as a result of the attraction and retention of high-quality employees, even in a down market.

For the majority of respondents, the concerns they have about attracting and retaining talent focus on competing with larger, better-known companies for the same talent pool and on coping with younger workers with unreasonable demands. Employers should keep in mind that there are more generations interacting in the workforce than ever before—and they have more options available to them than ever before—which puts more pressure on companies to meet each generation’s unique demands.”

The report also recommends some methods for addressing these employer concerns, such as building a strong employer brand in order to differentiate one’s company in a tight talent marketplace. The full report can be downloaded here.