Understanding How The US Federal Government Impacts Recruiting Processes

This subject is something most recruiters are aware of, many have dealt with, and it has had a significant impact on the way recruiting in the 21st Century is practiced.

Federal contractors: I am going to distill this down to a manageable concept, then I will move on to a detailed explanation. If an employer is subject to compliance requirements as a government contractor or subcontractor:

They must consider all qualified applicants for open roles.

?They can ONLY CONSIDER qualified applicants for open roles.

Let me break this down (and I have linked an infographic from the DOL.). Under these federal compliance guidelines, employers must have their jobs publicly available to job seekers (candidates) to apply. Most employers use their careers landing page, tied to their Applicant Tracking System, and job postings (i.e. LinkedIn, Monster, niche career sites) generally include links to the job. An applicant is defined as having expressed interest by formally applying for a specific job.

The next, and most important piece of this puzzle for candidates to understand is the definition of “qualified”.?

Simply put, it is the functional skills, employment history, and education that is listed as “Required” or “Must Have” for a specific position. Hiring managers set these parameters, not recruiters.

If you do not possess these requirements in full, you are not qualified and therefore legally cannot be considered for the job.

When you see recruiters discussing “BQ”s (Basic Qualifications) this is what they are referring to. “PQ”’s are Preferred Qualifications, mainly used when there are multiple candidates that all meet the basic qualifications.

So what does this mean for recruiters? WE READ RESUMES. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, because we are legally required to assess candidates against the requirements for each and every job. There are SERIOUS and SIGNIFICANT fines associated with non-compliance after an audit.

The DOL (Department of Labor) has a group under the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) that enforces a set of laws in place to make sure employers are practicing fair, unbiased hiring. That department is the OFCCP (Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs).

Basic Parameters: Supply and Service contractors or subcontractors with 50 or more employees and contracts of $50,000 or more.

This impacts: all city, county, state and federal agencies, and any organization that does business with them that fits the basic parameters.

This is a broad array of employers. Some examples would be the janitorial staff that cleans any/all buildings AND any of the suppliers of goods (i.e. toilet paper/paper towels, cleaning tools and chemicals, uniforms the staff wears) for public schools, medical centers, all government buildings, and the military. It also impacts companies providing technology products and services to those same entities: computers, software, internet access – that includes Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Apple. It also includes companies like GE, Philips, Johnson & Johnson – all supply medical equipment to medical centers. Think of all the companies that do business with Boeing (a huge aerospace supplier) such as airlines. Management consulting companies like Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture...all of them have divisions that work with the government. Pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies, auto manufacturers (i.e. Ford generally sells cars to law enforcement, Range Rover sells Jeeps to the military, etc.), oil and gas companies, banks and financial institutions - subject to compliance requirements. These are just a few examples of the employers and industries affected.

Basically almost any large employer in the US falls under this umbrella. This has impacted recruiting as an industry in some very significant ways.

Resumes

• Recruiters need to see a WELL DEFINED correlation between a candidate and the job. This is where “key words” come in (also known as BQ’s).
• The FORMAT needs to clearly delineate the candidate’s experience chronologically – so ditch the functional format.

Applicants

• There must be an auditable trail from start to finish – and this is most easily accomplished by online application. This is why recruiters will always tell you to apply online, or ask you if you have already applied online.
• ?Until a job seeker has expressed interest in a specific job, they are not considered an actual APPLICANT. (See previous bullet point)

ATS (Applicant Tracking System)

• The ATS must allow recruiters to move candidates from one workflow to another and provide a reason for rejection (called “dispositioning”).
• Processes must be clearly defined and documented in case of an audit by the Department of Labor/EEOC.

Sourcing (a specialized recruiting function)

• Sourcing recruiters (or Sourcers) are tasked with going out and finding qualified professionals, engaging them, and presenting them to recruiters and hiring managers.
• Until a job seeker has expressed a direct interest in a specific role, they are called “prospects”. ONLY when they have applied directly are they considered “candidates”. There is usually a “handoff” point in the process where the Sourcer will introduce the job seeker to the Recruiter.
• Sourcers tend to build long-term relationships with job seekers, and are a great resource for them.
• Sourcers are information gatherers; a close job title would be Market Researcher.
• Most staffing agency recruiters are by default Sourcers; the Account Managers generally bridge the gap with hiring managers and may or may not make the actual offers.

This is also why most of these large employers have teams dedicated to working with new graduates. If you are just graduating from school, you need to be working with University/ Campus Recruiters. These recruiters work at volume with schools and conferences (job fairs) to fill entry level roles. Most industry recruiters cannot touch entry level roles in their organization. When a hiring manager wants to open an internship or entry level role, they are referred to Campus/University Recruiting.

While not every single employer in the country is subject to compliance, enough recruiters work in an OFCCP-compliant environment sometime during their careers that much of the process becomes a best practice for us and how we train other recruiters.

List of federal contractors.

So please, quit vilifying recruiters for doing their job and obeying the law.

#jobseekerguardians #ofccp #resume #resumes #resumehelp #resumetips #resumewriters #askarecruiter