The phone rings… The call display reads “Legal Department”… You gasp… Your shaky hand picks up the phone… The dreaded words, “we need some help… ” Fade to black…
Over the years we have worked with many clients who come to us in a panic saying, “We have a litigation coming up for a former employee; we need all hiring records for them!”
This situation is unfortunately all too familiar for a lot of organizations: reacting to a legal request for all possible data on a hiring event that happened some time ago.
For any organization that uses Taleo, there is an opportunity to change this reactive situation into a proactive solution. Taleo offers the ability to extract a comprehensive set of documents detailing the different aspects of the candidate’s selection process.
Documents/Information to Consider Exporting
Job description
Having a copy of the job description used during the hiring process can help with clearly defining any responsibilities the employee may or may not be required to perform.
Candidate provided documents (resume/cover letters/etc.)
Storing the original copy of the candidate’s resume and cover letters can be very important in cases where a candidate misstates their education, experience, or capabilities.
Depending on the Taleo configuration, candidates can be allowed to delete the documents they provide. This can also cause issues when a candidate deletes a resume or uploads a new one with a similar file name (innocently or deliberately) as the resume validity may be put into question.
Recruiter/Hiring Manager provided documents
Interview guides and notes completed by interviewers can help provide context for the initial hiring decisions and any areas that were noted as concern gives a record of how candidates answered questions at the time of hire. This can help with comparisons to the employee’s claims at the time of termination.
Candidate Application including answers to prescreening questions
Organizations that use an ATS like Taleo know the power of prescreening questions. They also know that while prescreening questions can be very useful, there is an element of inaccuracy by the candidate. This can be for many reasons: not properly understanding the wording of the question, exaggeration on the candidate’s qualifications, or the candidate simply not being truthful. Having a record of the candidate’s answers can be used to show inaccuracies or how information at the time of hire differs from at the time of termination.
Offer Letters
Most organizations seem to do a pretty good job at keeping a record of the offer letter. However, this is often done on paper. Having an electronic copy helps with retaining the document for the correct period, ensuring the file is not lost or stored in a filing cabinet that no one has access to anymore.
Documents agreed to during onboarding
In addition to these types of documents, PDFs can be constructed out of Taleo data via the Taleo Connect Client platform. This is useful for summaries, including dates, calculated times to hire, number of candidates considered, etc.
Conclusion
Having clearly organized documents detailing hiring decisions and accurate information at the time of hire helps remove ambiguity during legal challenges. Putting proactive solutions like these in place will often pay for themselves many times over.