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EOE Concerns w/ Electronic-only Job Application?
Khyber asks: "Jobs seem to be increasingly harder to find in the real world today, and even harder to obtain due to the increased proliferation of on-line-only or electronic-only job applications. I know this firsthand - as today I attempted to apply for a job at Kroger's, only to discover that I had to fill out one of these electronic applications in their 'Career Opportunities Kiosk.' The machine miserably failed to get past the second page of the multi-paged the application. I've asked the manager if there was a paper application to fill out (why do I need to know how to use a computer to stock shelves?) and he has told me that I -must- fill out the application on their broken and defunct Dell Genesis Terminal. Are there legal concerns that I should be looking at, here?"
"Kroger's claims to be an EOE employer, however I feel that I am being denied my equal opportunity to gain employment due to the failings of a broken piece of software and hardware, and the refusal by the manager to give me a paper application to fill out, as an alternative. Can this be considered discriminatory to those of a lower education level in their attempt to obtain a job, as well? Are there any laws on the books that give me the opportunity to fill out the application on paper as opposed to digitally?"
"Can this be considered discriminatory to those of a lower education level in their attempt to obtain a job, as well?"
"Equal opportunity employer" means they do not discriminate on the basis of legally protected traits (such as those protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - race, color, religion, sex, or national origin). Education (or lack there) is *NOT* a protected characteristic. They are perfectly free to say that people who have below a certain level of education need not apply. (And the reverse is also true - I remember hearing about a police department in New Hamshipre that would not take applicants with above a 105 IQ, citing the high rate of burnout due to boredom)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
stop being a whiney bitch. If their terminal sucked, so what? You obviously have internet access to be posting your story to slashdot, and every public library has internet access, so you and the general public can apply online at Kroger's website.
http://www.kroger.com/careers.htm
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
I work for a company that does online and automated telephone hiring, so I have a small bit of experience in this area.
Hiring costs are a big deal, especially for large companies. A crapload of stuff can be automated. For example, if there's a minimum age requirement, the application software can automatically ignore all the 17 year olds who applied for a bartending job instead of having some HR person manually go through a stack of applications to sort out the idiots who applied even though they couldn't legally qualify. Trimming down the applicants to those who meet the minimum job requirements can save lots of time and money.
It's also easier to re-evaluate previous applicants when there are new job openings. Just because someone hired for one job doesn't mean you want to ignore them for future jobs. An automated system makes this possible. Paper applications are too much of a pain to review months later.
Data retention is another big deal. I know in California you are required to retain applications for one year (might be a Federal law, not sure). It's a damn sight easier to keep the data in electronic form rather instead of a big ass filing cabinet filled with thousands of applications you will never look at (nothing says you have to look at the applications, just retain them).
-- Will program for bandwidth
I don't see any problems here. Your opportunity is as equal as the next guy who tries to use that broken down machine. Besides, I believe EOE is in regards to race, religion, sex, etc... How the perspective employer receives your application is up to them.
It's called disparate impact. If the higher level of education is not required, that by itself is not the problem. The problem is if in the applicant pool, more of a certain protected class of people don't meet that level of education. In most cases, what happens is that the white applicants do, for example, have a high school diploma... while blacks and Hispanics are more likely not to.
However, it's progressively easier to claim that the education is required, as more and more jobs require employees to have literacy and problem-solving skills even at low levels.
Inventory control and RFID, to name a couple of reasons
I make quite a decent salary in the military. And my job is hardly menial, and I would say I'm fairly intelligent since I managed to graduate from a well known Boston college that recently stole a cannon. Plus I have yet to be shot at and I've been in for close to two years. The military like anything else, is what you make of it and is a job like any other.
I've read in many places that the nationwide unemployment rate issued by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics counts only people who are drawing unemployment insurance, which is not available to recent graduates and which expires after several months whether or not one's best job searching efforts result in a job offer.
This is not true.
In BLS definitions, people are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey week. This includes not only regular full-time year-round employment but also all part-time and temporary work. Also, people with a regular job who did no work for exceptional reasons (vacation, paternity/maternity leave, illness, strike, etc) are considered employed.
People are considered unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior four weeks, and are currently available for work.
So the major problem is that people who are seeking full-time jobs but are working even a single hour a week are counted as employed. Less egregiously, if you stop looking for work--say you want a job, but spend months looking and finally get discouraged and stop job hunting for 4 weeks--you're not considered unemployed.
But if you're looking for work and do not have a job, you are counted as unemployed even if you're not drawing unemployment.
It also does not count situations of underemployment, such as an IT professional working at Kroger because local companies' IT departments are fully staffed.
And it probably shouldn't. You don't have a right to have a cushy job doing whatever your main interest is at a huge hourly wage.
I mean, if I'm working as an entry level programmer but would like to be a senior engineer, should I be considered unemployed? Or if I'm a senior engineer but want to be a non-tech manager? Or if I'm a manager but want to be a writer?
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Then "many places" are printing incorrect information.
Unemployment numbers count people who are not employed and who are looking for work, regardless of whether they're receiving money from unemployment insurance. The rate does decline when people can't find work and give up looking, but it includes recent graduates who are looking for work.
More information than most people could even find interesting is available here.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/homch1_h.htm
any other questions?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The race and sex information is not used for the hiring process - it is used for statistical analysis later on (e.g. monitoring compliance with diversity requirements) and for reporting to the Department of Labor. HR and hiring managers don't even see it.
You are standing in an open server west of a blue house, with a boarded front door. There is an Exchange mailbox here.
Some of those *are* legal to ask. Birthdate? OK. Race? OK, but you don't have to answer (they collect this data to prove that they're not throwing away all black applications, for example). How you get to work? OK.