Recruitment
The aim of this exercise is to respond to directions from your employer to design a recruitment exercise that hopefully will increase the diversity of a city department while complying with federal laws concerning employment discrimination and fair recruitment/testing methods.
You work in the public sector. Specifically, you work in HR for a medium-sized city of approximately 1 million people. Approximately 30% of the city's residents are racial or ethnic minorities, with a significant proportion of African-American and Hispanic residents.
At present there are approximately 900 firefighters employed by the city; a full complement of fire fighters would be 1000 firefighters.
The city wants to recruit approximately 100 additional fire fighters. At the present time, the fire department is overwhelmingly white (and male). Many of the current fire fighters are the sons and nephews of former or current fire fighters.
In the past, potential recruits to the fire department learned of the civil service exams through word of mouth from relatives who worked for the fire department; some of them had access to a ‘bank' of former exam questions that had been collected and stored at fire stations.
The entry exam for the fire department in the past consisted of a series of essay questions, posing hypothetical questions that a fire fighter might encounter in a fire. High-ranking officers in the fire department designed the questions.
Applicants were ranked according to their scores on the exam and as positions became available applicants were appointed in the order in which they were ranked on the test. A minimum score was required to be placed on the list from which appointments were made.
Generally speaking, while approximately 25% of non-minority candidates scored well enough to be placed on a civil service list from which appointments would be made, and had a good chance of being appointed, only approximately 10% of minority candidates scored well enough to ‘pass' the exam, and were not placed on the hiring list.
The Fire Commission would like to increase minority representation in the ranks of the Fire Department, if possible. The Commission has asked the city HR department for which you work to design a recruitment campaign and suggest an entrance exam that might achieve its goals of increasing minority representation in the fire department.
Write a memorandum to the Fire Commission about recruitment practices of the Fire Department and to suggest ways to achieve the Commission's desired goals. In any event, you wish to avoid litigation over the test results and be able to defend the results of the entrance exam, even if it failed to achieve the city's goal of increasing minority
In your memorandum, you should cover the following points:
Critique the past recruitment practices of the Fire Department in light of what you know about the legal principles of discrimination, particularly the different theories of race discrimination under Title VII. An important resource would be EEOC guidelines on race discrimination https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/race-color.html
https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/race-color.html
Important cases would be Griggs v. Duke Power,
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/401/424
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/401/424
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/411/792
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/411/792
Would you recommend following the same recruitment practices of the past (e.g., word-of-mouth recruitment, essay-based exam questions)? Why or why not?
What would you suggest in the recruitment campaign you have been asked to help design?
What specific recruitment techniques might increase the diversity of the pool of applicants?
There is a possibility that despite your best efforts to avoid adverse impact, the assessment methods might produce a result in which minorities achieved less than 80% of the pass rate of non-minorities. What advice would you give in advance to avoid a potentially successful lawsuit challenging the results of the examination? An important case You can use the above points to structure your memorandum, but be sure to consider and address the following issues, which are implicit in the exercise:
1) Describe the concepts of disparate treatment and disparate impact liability under Title VII, and analyze why the previous recruitment / testing methods might violate Title VII.
2) Discuss what steps you would take in an effort to increase the pool of minority applicants and, hopefully, avoid a lower pass rate for minority candidates.
3) Discuss what advice you would give in advance about being able to defend your recruitment/testing even if minorities fail to achieve a pass rate that is at least 80% of non- minority candidates. Read the Ricci case carefully and discuss the wisdom of using test-development experts. Can you locate a website for a test-development expert business and describe what they would do?
Be sure to use outside sources to support your themes as assertions in your paper.
The format for this assignment should be a memorandum to the Fire Commission, using paragraphs and complete sentences. Make sure to include in-text citations.