If recruiting strategies appear to be biased against certain groups, the consequences can be staggering. Here’s a case where a program ended up with a New York City government office footing a $21 million bill.
The hefty payment came as the settlement to a class action suit against the city’s Parks Department that had been dragging on since 1999. In it, black and Hispanic employees of the department claimed they were passed over for promotions because of a program designed to recruit white college graduates into managerial positions instead.
The program’s purpose was to hire recent graduates from elite, mostly Ivy League, colleges (who tend to be white). According to the plaintiffs, those hires were quickly offered promotions to positions that often weren’t advertised to other employees. Sometimes, they were promoted without having to interview for the positions, despite normal practice.
Lessons learned
What did the department do wrong? As noted on the HR Tests blog, the actual numbers were more or less in the employer’s favor – of the 179 people hired by the maligned program, 40 were black or Hispanic. So the problem was more with bad communication to current employees and inconsistencies in promoting practices. By not putting all candidates through the same promotion process, it gave minority employees the impression of bias.
Read more about the settlement here. For an older article about the recruiting program, go here.
