Rhymes with Cars

In their infinite wisdom, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) recently rolled out their program to support diversity amongst Internet Applicants. Like most government programs, I believe that this was rolled out with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, like most government programs, it seems as if very little thought was put into this and how it will work in the real world.

For those not familiar with this new regulation, count your blessings. In a nut shell, any company that does more then $50,000 annually in revenue with the government needs to keep track of how they find, qualify, accept and reject potential job candidates online. Since the US government is famous for spending thousands on hammers, toilet seats and haircuts, $50,000 in revenue is pretty much everyone.

Again, while I think that the government had the best of intentions when rolling this out, like many government programs that are designed to ‘help’, they only stifle most companies. Sarbanes Oxley immediately comes to mind. Punish the masses based on the actions of a few.

Without going into too much detail (you can get that here if you want), if your company is a government contractor, you are now required to keep very detailed records on any applicant that applies for a job via your website or a 3^rd party job board (Yahoo! HotJobs for example). This shouldn’t be too much of a problem and thus far hasn’t been problematic for a lot of companies. You apply for a job, your resume goes into an applicant tracking system, the company calls you and determines that you are or are not qualified and the recruiter documents this. Easy peasy.

Where the regulation is very gray, is when a recruiter is looking to fill a position and searches a resume database. I have met with all of my accounts on this, and each one has a different interpretation of how this works for OFCCP compliance. I met with someone last week that felt that unless the person specifically applies for a position, they are not an applicant and don’t need to be tracked. I have another client that feels that they need to not only disposition each resume they review, but print it out and store the hard copy. This company is adding two FTE’s to manage all of this.

As we are now seeing with Sarbanes Oxley, this new requirement is going to be especially painful for small companies who will bear the brunt of figuring out how to manage this new regulation, while at the same time, keep their business moving forward. In the end, I think that, while designed to be fair to everyone, this regulation will hurt everyone.

Based on the way that the regulation reads (my interpretation), when doing a resume search for a candidate, it is important to define, as specifically as possible, the type of candidate that you are looking for. This might do a lot to find diverse candidates in terms of race and sex, but don’t companies want people with diverse backgrounds as well? If a recruiter is looking for a product manager for an internet company, odds are much stronger that they will never find a well qualified candidate that comes with a consumer products background. The person with the CP background could bring a wealth of knowledge to the table and a totally different view point to the company, but the chances are that this person will never be found due to the tightening of the search criteria.

Likewise, for job candidates, it will be more challenging to find a job via job boards or to break into a new industry. I have always had a problem with companies that define a position and will only hire based on 100% of that criteria being met. This is essentially what the OFCCP Internet Applicant definition does. A candidate may have the best resume in the world and may be the smartest person in a 5 state region, but unless her resume specifically matches all of the criteria defined by hiring manager and recruiter, she will never be found.

For recruiters who have to manage through this, I am truly sorry. Odds are you were already doing the right thing. For people who post their resume online, this is tricky too. If you are applying for a job with a government contractor, I suggest modifying your resume specifically for the position that you are applying for. I don’t favor lying, but you are trying to sell yourself. You just need to sell a little harder now.