Running Head: HUMAN RESOURCE LAWS 1

Human Resource Laws

Name

Institution

Date
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Human Resource Laws

Part 1

Connecticut vs. Teal

A state agency in Connecticut gave some individuals provisional status as supervisors.

The agency required that all these individuals would have to take a written test (selection

method) so that they could achieve permanent supervisor status. Upon receiving the exam, those

that failed filed a suit since they were exempted from the selection process. The claim was that

the state of Connecticut, in conjunction with other state agencies and their officials were in co-

hoots to exempt black people from promotions. By so doing, they were violating Title VII of the

civil rights act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on the grounds of race,

ethnicity, religion, and even sex. How they violated this Act was by requiring applicants to pass

a written test, which the complainants claimed was not job-related.

The result of this test was that the passing rate of the test for blacks was 68 percent of the

passing rate for the whites. Before the trial began, the accused made a move and promoted 22.9

percent of the black candidates from the eligibility list. In comparison, only 13.5 percent of the

whites received promotions from the same file. Despite this, the court still held that the test that

barred promotions to permanent supervisory positions had a discriminatory effect on the blacks.

Title VII guarantees employees an opportunity to compete equally with others despite their

differences in race, gender, ethnicity, or sex. Therefore there was no way the employer could

quickly get off the burden of the test being a barrier by directly promoting more blacks than

whites.

From a personal perspective, the decision by the district court to state or rule that the

employer was not supposed to prove whether the test was job-related or not is quite misleading.
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An employer has to ensure that they follow the confines of Title VII, which means that every test

they administer as part of the selection process should not have any aspects of discrimination.

That was the first impression that they sent to the blacks when they conducted the test, and they

were, therefore, guilty of discriminatory practices (Lavin & DiMichelle, 2017). The state

agency’s move to increase the number of blacks was just a stint that cannot take away the first

impression and intentions of discriminating the blacks. Therefore on this one, I agree with the

court’s decision. On the other side, though, it is essential to remember that these people who

filed a lawsuit against the agency had failed the test. Therefore, it would be wise to look at their

motives of filing the suit to avoid wrongly accusing the company in a case of bitter non-selected

employees.

Tests and Job Analysis

Tests for job analysis should be reliable in that they should have the ability to act as

predictors of the outcomes that the hiring organizations intend to have. There are usually adverse

impacts of using tests that are not aligned to job analysis. One of these is that the organization

risks selecting the wrong people for the jobs. The individual may pass the test, but they may not

exhibit the characteristics that the organization was looking for as they teste for the wrong things

in the first place.

This brings in the other impact, which is higher recruitment costs for organizations. They

may have to go back to the drawing board to try and get the employee that they had been looking

for in the first place (Kshatriya, 2017). This would be quite costly for the organization in terms

of time and financial resources. The other impact is that an organization may select the wrong

people for their jobs due to the lack of reliability and validity of the test instrument. This may, in

turn, reduce productivity and lead to the overall decline of the organization.
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Misaligned test processes are also dangerous for the wellbeing of organizations. One of

the consequences of using a misaligned test process is adverse legal consequences for the hiring

organization. There is bound to be some type of discrimination or fault that will arise with such

kinds of tests. The employees may notice this and take legal action, which would be costly for

the organization. For instance, in Connecticut vs. Teal case, the test did not align with the job

analysis, and therefore the lawsuit arose from that.

Another consequence is that the organization will have less equitability. There is likely to

be an imbalance of sorts in the workforce, which affects diversity that is important for the growth

of a business (Kshatriya, 2017). When employees recognize such problems, they may force the

organization to take actions that were not pre-planned such as hiring to achieve equity. For

instance, in Connecticut vs. Teal, the state agency was forced to conduct another selection to try

and cover up their inequitable practices, although it was too late. These come with individual

costs, both financial and non-financial.

Case Study

Park Heights High School must have a transparent, effective, and efficient selection process as it

would contribute to positive educational outcomes. Therefore the sequence of the flow for the

selection process here will be quite a sensitive one. There will also be additional information

necessary for the best outcomes. The first stage of this process will be the preliminary interviews

and screening, which will happen right after receiving the applications (Gupta & Kumar, 2014).

The goal of this step is to weed out all the undesirable applicants.

The criteria will be to check those with the most irrelevant qualifications according to

the school’s job specifications. James Cooper indicates that they have already conducted

background checks. Therefore the consultant would like to get information on whose background
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checks the school has undertaken previously. If it is for the applicants, then it means that the

school has almost completed the first step of preliminary screening. However, the request would

be to send these reports over so that a professional team could go through them and weed out any

undesirable characters from the list.

After this first cut, the applicants will then be invited for employment tests, which will be

online to save on costs and also time. The importance of these tests will be to check the real

knowledge of candidates to ensure that the school gets the right fit in the end. Several selection

tests could be employed, but the recommended ones, in this case, will be intelligence and

proficiency tests.

The intelligence tests will analyze the mental and learning ability of the candidates

(Gupta & Kumar, 2014). It is essential that teachers are quick decision-makers, thus the vitality

of these tests. For the proficiency tests, they will test how right a candidate is in terms of the

skills and knowledge that they have acquired during their experiences on the job. Here, there is a

need to provide information on the ideal abilities, the job specification, and description to enable

the selection consultant to test the right things and avoid misalignment of the tests with the job

analysis.

The next step will be a face to face interview where the employee will get to extract more

information, especially on the personality of the potential employee (Tomeikova, 2016). The

recommendation here again Is to provide a complete job analysis with a rating of the importance

level of each task. This will help the consultant to come up with useful situational interview

questions that would help to determine the right fit for the job. The selection process will end in

a check for the references that the candidates provided during their applications. This will help to
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provide a deeper understanding of the potential employee in terms of past behaviors and

relationships in work environments.

Part 2

Costs and Benefits of Personality Tests

Some human resource professionals may argue that personality tests are outdated.

However, in a world where the job applications are often more than five times the number of

openings, some organizations may opt to turn to personality tests. When it comes to this, the

organizations must weigh the costs and the benefits.

One of the benefits of personality tests is that they help in narrowing down the applicant

pool. This can only happen if the organization decides to conduct the tests before the interview.

The personality tests will give the interviewers a glimpse of the character of the applicant, and if

it is not what they are looking for, then they will get eliminated (Kumar, 2019). The other benefit

is that it helps interviewers to know what type of questions they will ask the applicant once they

come in for a face to face interview. The personality test, as opposed to other tests that may have

the challenge of limited time, allow having a piece of in-depth knowledge about the interested

candidate, which is also a plus to the selection and later the recruitment process.

There are also some costs that interviewers should consider upon deciding to use

personality tests as a selection tool or method. One of these is that there is the risk of having

applicants stop the process in the middle. Most personality tests are usually lengthy and take

loads of time and effort. Therefore they may dissuade the applicant from completing. These

candidates who give up with filling these tests might have been the right fit for the job leading to

loss of talent. The other limitation is that personality tests may be quite expensive. The estimates

are that they may cost 100-5,000 dollars per person (Kumar, 2019). These costs would be quite
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frustrating, especially if the organization does not end up hiring the right candidate for the job,

which is a possibility. Potential employees, most of the time, will fill in the answers that they

know the employers want to hear instead of the truth, which ends up jeopardizing the reliability

of personality tests as instruments for selection. This brings in the issue of potential employees

faking personality test.

From a personal perspective faking personality tests is a severe problem as that is what

most people do today. They would instead be socially accepted than tell the truth (Burns et al.,

2017). The adverse consequences of the faking make it a more serious issue as continuous faking

could lead to identity disorders and general poor performance of individuals. Faking personality

tests could have adverse consequences to both the employee and the employer. The employee

may get the job, but they would be at a hard place when it comes to performance. They may have

put it out that they have the skills required for the job in terms of their personality, but they

cannot fake it forever. Therefore they will end up with poor performance and productivity where

they may be subject to termination of employment (Fahey, 2018). The other potential

consequence is for the organization, which may suffer losses due to the employee's behavioral

misalignment with the personality for performance. There may be complaints from clientele and

also discord among the employees, which affects the overall productivity. The losses from such

episodes would be detrimental not only to the physical health of the organization but also to the

brand reputation.
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Ethical and Fair Use of Social Media in Employee Selection

XYZ Company

Policy Statement

Ethical and Fair Use of Social media in Employee Selection

Note:

These guidelines apply to all stakeholders of the employee selection process through

social media platforms, more so the human resource department. The social media platforms

include but are not limited to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Social Media Specific Hiring Policies

Please take the time to understand these simple but essential guidelines. Our main aim as

an organization is to ensure the adherence to ethics and fair practices of a selection of employees

no matter the medium that the human resource department chooses to employ.

Job Advertisement

Any communication of a vacancy must be made through the official social media pages

of the company. The job advert must be verified by the human resource manager and only posted

by the digital communications department. There shall be no circulation of the same on personal

pages unless the individual shares the original post by the company. Only the digital

communications department have the login credentials for the official social media pages of the

company. In line with this, they are prohibited from any ‘inbox’ dealings with employees or

solicitation to grant them opportunities at the company. The consequences for such an action will

be an immediate termination of the employment contract.

Screening Process
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The human resource department shall be responsible for screening applicants from social

media. They shall not use the information on social media platforms to discriminate against

applicants unless there is proof that the information could deter the achievement of company

objectives. Beyond the screening process, all successful employees are required to conduct all

the other selection tests and procedures outside of social media. All employees are warned

against deceiving potential employees of the continuation of the selection process online. The

consequences of such an action will again lead to the termination of the employment contract.

Signature

Date

On socializing the policy, it will be available for all department heads to pass it onto all

employees. This will ensure that there are ample communication and knowledge of its existence

and content. Additionally, the policy will be available on all notice boards within the company.
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References

Burns, G., Shoda, E., & Roebke, M. (2017). Putting applicant faking effects on personality tests

into context. Journal of Managerial Psychology. 32

Fahey, G. (2018). Faking Good and Personality Assessments of Job applicants: A Review of the

Literature. DBS Business Review. 2

Gupta, A., & Kumar, S. (2014). A Study on Recruitment & Selection Process with Reference.

Research Gate

Kshatriya, Sunitha. (2017). A Case Study of Job Analysis and its Positive Impact on Behavioral

Structured Interview. 7.

Kumar, R. (2019). The Use of Personality Testing in Personnel Selection. CMC Senior Theses.

2038

Lavin, H., & DiMichelle, E. (2017). Splitting the Difference: Are Sub-Group Claims Cognizable

Under the ADEA? Employee Relations Law Journal

Tomeikova, L. (2016). The effective recruitment and selection practices of organizations in the

financial sector operating in the Slovak republic. eXclusive e-JOURNAL