U.S.Laws May Make Online Job Hunting Harder

j00bar writes "CNN/Fortune is reporting that applying for a job online is going to get harder. 'New federal guidelines meant to standardize how employers track data on the diversity of their job-applicant pool are taking effect starting today for jobs at federal contractors -- and similar rules will kick in later this year at U.S. companies with more than 50 employees. And resumes and search approaches that worked perfectly well before may no longer do the trick.'"

Comments

Might be difficult....

[SIGALRM]

According to this definition, an applicant must "express interest" in the job... That "expression of interest" must show that he or she has all the qualifications for the job listed in the company's job description (not just some or most of them)...

By this definition, it's going to be difficult to "express interest" in the job listings for most tech companies, which are often loaded with specific qualifications (i.e. "Perl, JavaScript 1.0, Quark, MS Office, and Doom 3 experience"). I've never been to an interview for a job I eventually landed where I met 100% of their qualifications.

Re:Might be difficult....

[Kawolski]

You don't meet our qualifications?

Required skills are:

Linux Operating Systems (RedHat, CentOS)
Linux Run Levels and Services Configuration (both xinetd and individual services)
Server/System Troubleshooting Skills
BASH scripting
Basic PERL
IPTables and Firewall Technologies
Load-Balancer Technologies
Intel Architecture Hardware Troubleshooting
Windows Server Administration
MSSQL, MySQL, and Sybase Administration
SSH Protocol Key Authentication
PHP Scripting
Apache Configuration
Mail Technologies (qmail, milters, spamassassin, clamav)
Tomcat Configuration
The importance of documentation and repeatable process.
Long-term architectural planning.
3 to 5 years of experience required

Job is located in downtown Portland
Job location is Portland, OR

Compensation: $15/hr

Re:Might be difficult....

[lukewarmfusion]

It's cynical, but I believe they do this to make all of their applicants underqualified. That gives them a reason to pay them less than top of the scale. Where they list the job as $50,000-$75,000, you don't have the required 14 years of .Net experience so you're going to have to accept the $52,000.

On the other hand, I know that some managers just don't understand it well enough to write a good position description. I've had to write several PDs (sometimes for a job I was leaving, sometimes for a position I was hiring, and finally sometimes because the higher-ups didn't like my level of job security). It's usually best done by someone who can do the job himself, but the next best thing is to define the roles and very basic requirements - will need to create web applications in a Linux-based environment.

Just because it could be done in PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, or Java doesn't mean you have to list all of those. And if the language hasn't been selected yet, why bother listing it at all? There are excellent developers with PHP and Ruby experience that will be turned off from the suggestion that they need to use Java.

Ok, I'm lost.

[Kawolski]

From TFA: To comply with these new rules and get the most diversity, employers will have an incentive to keep the pool of applicants for each job relatively small and as random as possible.

So in order to get a more diverse and random selection of applicants, we're going to shrink the qualified applicant pool by making it more difficult to apply for a job? Can someone explain to me how this is supposed to increase diversity? I would think that if you want a more diverse selection, you would want to increase the qualified applicant pool so you have more people to choose from.

Re:Ok, I'm lost.

[Procyon101]

For all of those that say white entitlement doesn't exisit, they just aren't white, rich, and racisit enough. For all of us "super-whites" we have a special ceremony on our 12th birthday where we get our "White Entitlement Card." It gets us into to whatever school we want, exclusive clubs, and even a seat in the Senate. A representative from Big Oil even comes and fills up our SUVs that we got from our white friend that owns the car dealership that uses illegal mexican labor. You even get 5 "get out of jail free" times, they punch the card though so it sucks when you get to #6 and have to go to low security club-med type prison.

I can't explain the rest right now, one of my servants just informed me that my favorite endangered species platter is ready for lunch.

um..

[Ryz0r]

an applicant must "express interest" in the job

Surely you wouldnt work in a place you have no interest in!

Here is a question

[drgonzo59]

What if claim that I am a African American, but I am actually white. Can they quantify and measure my race, will they sent to a local eugenics clinic to measure the size of my head or take my DNA to identify my race?

What would happen, if I just tell them that my grand-grand-grand father came from Africa so deep down I feel like I am part of a minority?

Actually I never check the "White" or "Caucasian" box on the race section on the forms, because putting myself in a race category just reinforces the fact that there are race categories and people are somehow treated differently because of it. Actually the word "Caucasian" comes directly from studies of eugenics at the turn of the century and I consider using it just as offensive as someone using the "n"-word, because it implies endorsing the values and attitudes of the time.

Law of unintended consequences again

[jmorris42]

Congress passes these ever more bigoted laws (in the name of diversity of course, gotta love NewSpeak) so they can feel good about having 'done something' about a problem that increasingly is made worse by more laws because it has been mostly solved. We long since passed the point where the negative impact of more laws were outweighed by the positive benefits. Thirty-forty years ago, yea, there were some serious problems still lingering in society. We talked a good "everybody is equal" but practice didn't match theory very well.

But these days we have, if anything, overshot equality and went to tribalism amok. These days it seems the only ones who quotes King's "I have a Dream" speech's line about judging everyone on their ideas instead of their skin is Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich because the entire 'Civil Rights' establishment has invested all their political capital on maintaining quotas and pretending to be victims while having all the trappings (limo, jets, mistresses, etc) of the wealthy. Listen up folks, when (in theory if not in practice) the left, the right and just about everyone in between are in agreement on an issue it really isn't much of an issue anymore. The only reason it is still an issue is because too many people have made an industry out of "Oprah Nation" style victimhood as career.

Actual Details from Ars Technica

[rueger]

Hurrah - someone with research skills!

The actual rule:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/fedreg/final/200502017 6.htm
Obligation To Solicit Race and Gender Data for Agency Enforcement Purposes

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060207-6127 .html

Do you know what the OFCCP is? It is the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and that little taste of bureaucratic alphabet soup is a part of the Department of Labor's Employment Standards Administration. The OFCCP's job is to ensure "that employers doing business with the Federal government comply with the laws and regulations requiring nondiscrimination." In essence, that makes the OFCCP one of the many departments that exist within the government to monitor activities and make sure things are done properly and fairly. A noble goal, to be sure, but the OFCCP has distinguished itself with a new rule going into effect this week regarding the tracking of those who apply for jobs on the Internet, and it may have repercussions for anyone using electronic means to search for a new career.