Reference no: EM132913422

Question

Recently, Springfield University has been accused of discriminatory hiring practices with respect to support staff. The University Administration does not have any evidence or reports that there is a systemic issue of direct discrimination, but upon reviewing recent hiring results, there is evidence of adverse effect discrimination. In particular, the recent selection ratio data indicates that East Asian women are hired at a disproportionately higher rate than any other demographic group. Based on this preliminary evidence of discrimination, Miriam launched an investigation to determine how best to address the issue. The results of the investigation are summarized below: Support staff are critical to the functioning of the University; they are able to reduce a great deal of the workload placed on professors to help support teaching and research at the University. Without qualified and high-performing support staff, the quality of the education provided at the University and research output would suffer dramatically. Insufficient support staff support could lead the University's reputation to fall, and cause a reduction in student enrollments. Because these are such critical jobs, the University Administration budgeted $120,000 to recruit applicants for the 30 support staff positions that were required to be filled last year.

However, the Administration was pleased to find out that Miriam and her HR team only spent around $20,000 on recruitment for support staff positions, even after all of the positions were filled. The popularity and rising prestige of the University have made it very easy to generate a large applicant pool, and the University was able to rely heavily on employee referrals to find applicants. Miriam has been happy to use employee referrals because they are effectively free1 and because applicants who are referred to the University often have a good idea of the type of work they will be required to do, and typically perform well on the job when they are hired. Other than referrals, the jobs were primarily advertised on Facebook, which cost approximately $10,000 in total. Because there are so many different support staff jobs, and because the HR team doesn't know exactly what goes into each job, it was determined that Facebook advertising would be a very cost-effective approach to recruiting a large applicant pool. The HR team can save a lot of time by uploading a brief job ad with very few details, and allow the Facebook marketing algorithm to target potential applicants automatically. This approach generates a very large applicant pool for relatively little cost.

Based on the results of the investigation and your expertise in personnel recruitment and selection, please identify the problems with Springfield University's recruitment process for support staff. What advice would you give to Miriam to improve the recruitment process for support staff and reduce the impacts of bias?