What I find healing is this: ‘If the activities are focused on building a talent pipeline and not filling a specific position, the search activity does not need to be logged.’

M’kay. Okay so I don’t like what most people – including experts in our trade whom I respect – have written about this thing.

Long and short, that With both passive and active candidates, no matter the source or method, we only record those who respond to our queries and are qualified. As long as we do it consistently. Yes? No? Whether in response to postings, searches of internal/external databases, general web searches, or names gen from phone research, etc. ???

A couple of things still concern me. Gerry Crispen wrote something on this also, a white paper here: http://www.shrm.org/hrresources/whitepapers_published/CMS_016203.asp#P-4_0

He presented examples and solutions, each well reasoned and thought out, of course. But contrary to at least one example in his white paper, we (at Freescale) would use technology to quickly scour all 1000 (in his example) to find the ‘most’ qualified, not necessarily the ‘first’ qualified to show up in the first batch of 100. So… 75 people out of the entire 1000 (e.g.) may be minimally qualified, but we would choose the best 5 – 10 as a short list. While doing this, we may network with the remaining for future things.

Do our Freescale internal rules – or at least our interpretation of them – properly reflect the OFCCP regulation? Or could we limit stuff to just contract openings with federal (Tier I Prime etc) vendors? Compliance would be literally impossible given the resources we now have available. That is, if we take the interpretations literally. We cannot capture and store every (ostensibly) qualified resume we stumble across in our internet searches. Between all of our recruiters we might see 100,000+ each year. We don’t have the warehouse or staff to input all of it; and in fact doing so might well violate an ‘applicant’s’ copyrights and/or privacy or whatever.

Yet many feel the ‘applicant’ threshold is crossed if we even glance at a resume we?ve spotted using search engines or bots.

But after the hype, the rule clearly requires a job seeker.

http://www.dictionary.com defines a seeker as: ‘n 1: someone making a search or inquiry…’

An applicant is someone who seeks us out, not us them. Yet some interpretations say, ‘An individual?s posting of a resume on a commercial resume database is generally sufficient to satisfy the ‘expression of interest’ requirement; this includes googling for resumes.’

An ‘applicant’ is:

n : One that applies, as for a job.
n : a person who requests or seeks something such as assistance or employment or admission

Applying is a deliberate step taken by someone toward a specific THING that they are aware of:

ap?ply

v. ap?plied, ap?ply?ing, ap?plies
1. To bring into nearness or contact with someTHING (allcaps mine)
?
4. To devote (oneself or one’s efforts) to someTHING
v. intr.
…
2. To request or seek assistance, employment, or admission: applied for unemployment benefits; will apply to college next year. See Synonyms at resort.?
So by definition Freescale interpretation is off.

I would also say the (internal) rules of companies I’ve seen bar this interpretation: ‘Note: An individual is not an ‘internet applicant’ unless all four criteria are satisfied.’ etc.

The ?four criteria’ I always see presented are a watered down version of 41 CFR 60-1.3. This CFR clearly establishes the context of a two way connection between applicant and company: It requires an ‘expression of interest’ initiated on the part of applicant, not employer. Going further, the regulation says IMHO that after an ?expression of interest? the interaction ?must be non-comparative, objective and relevant to performance in the particular position.’ 41 CFR 60-1.3(3).

So, what is required is a mutual, expressed interest between company and person about a specific position, initiated by the applicant. Applicant’s only way of expressing to company, as far as I can tell, is to apply directly to a job posting and/or contact the company. Only then can it ‘consider’ applicant and raise interaction to the level of the mutual exchange contemplated in the CFR. Within the clear words of 41 CFR 60-1.3, we have no connection whatsoever with people who have not engaged us with a qualified expression of interest on a specific opening.

Finally, there is a clear difference between people companies run across doing a Google (or other non-board) search v. those who post their resumes on Monster et al.

Search engines index resume homepages and such. The people found in those databases don’t ask to be put there. They are not ?applying? for anything. By comparison, we cannot reasonably say that someone who posts their resume on a roadside billboard in Michigan is made an ‘applicant’ by the mere hope that some anonymous trucker will snap a picture of the resume and drive it somewhere. More specifically, does this ‘applicant’ know for a fact that some heretofore unknowing trucker driving to Texas will snap a picture of the billboard and hand deliver it to a company recruiter? who will then ?consider? and maybe present the person against an opening that the transporting trucker is probably not aware of? ???

Someone who posts to Monster (on the other hand) is arguably closer to ‘applying’ than someone Google just happens to snag. But these people are not applicants. They’ve not initiated contact with the company to apply for specific positions for which they qualify.
And because Monster gives people tools to ‘apply’ to specific, open positions at companies they seek out, someone (IMHO) who does not use these tools to apply does so for a reason; there is no applicant initiated ?expression of interest? that is ?relevant to performance in the particular position.? Thus they cannot be considered an applicant. They’re sort of in their own category; maybe ‘Postant’ or something but as yet that word doesn?t exist in our lexicon.

Okay, that’s my minor opinion dying view and that’s all I have to say about that.

Best regards,
Paul

Paul Westmoreland
Global Strategist
Freescale Talent Sourcing
http://www.freescale.com
7700 West Parmer Lane
Austin, Texas 78729
512.996.4362 (W)
512.964.6049 (C)
paul.westmoreland@freescale.com

This e-mail, and any associated attachments have been classified as:
[x] Freescale Semiconductor General Business
[ ] Freescale Semiconductor Internal Use Only
[ ] Freescale Semiconductor Confidential Proprietary

PS I am not a lawyer, but I think that anyone who posts a resume on Monster, or any of the other boards, would have a hard time supporting any claim under Title VII arising from the posting and response. Has anyone ever filed a supportable and successful claim for discrimination based on an unsolicited approach from a company? I would challenge legal at any company (even the most clever ones) to find an instance of this anywhere in Western law, unless the recruiting conversation went reasonably past the point of first approach by the company. The last thing we need is government to team with legal to tell us how to recruit when we are stretched so thin already.

IMHO

On a more serious note, Robert Style NAPS council has recently chimed in on the issue. Maybe he and Lisa [other association?s council] could collaborate on a follow up piece regarding TPR [retained/contingency/temp/etc.] implications?

Howard Adamsky