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A lot of employers refuse or are reluctant to hire the unemployed, but that is a questionable practice for many reasons.
1. Unemployed individuals can usually start work earlier than currently employed individuals as unemployed individuals do not have to request time off for the first and second interviews and then, upon job offer, provide two week notice to their current employer. It can take months for a currently employed individuals to start working on a new job but a an unemployed individual may be able to start almost immediately.
2. Unemployed individuals are not interviewing "on the clock," unlike some employed individual. Employers should especially suspicious of currently employed workers who are able to schedule an interview on little notice during normal business hours and should ask, "are you currently on the clock?"
3. Currently employed workers may be perpetually dissatisfied "job hoppers" who will not stay long with the company. This is especially true if they list many different past employers.
4. Hiring the currently unemployed may qualify the employer for various tax credits, such as welfare to Work Opportunity Tax Credits, thereby reducing the employer's tax liability.
5. Discriminating against the unemployed is a risky practice as it could constitute illegal disparate impact discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and potentially provide bad publicity for the employer.
Can anyone think of other business reasons to hire the unemployed?
A lot of employers refuse or are reluctant to hire the unemployed, but that is a questionable practice for many reasons.
1. Unemployed individuals can usually start work earlier than currently employed individuals as unemployed individuals do not have to request time off for the first and second interviews and then, upon job offer, provide two week notice to their current employer. It can take months for a currently employed individuals to start working on a new job but a an unemployed individual may be able to start almost immediately.
Yet, it is very possible that the unemployed person is not current in their skills whereas while the employer has to wait for the unemployed person, the time to train the new hire is decreased as the person is up to date with their skills.
2. Unemployed individuals are not interviewing "on the clock," unlike some employed individual. Employers should especially suspicious of currently employed workers who are able to schedule an interview on little notice during normal business hours and should ask, "are you currently on the clock?"
People interview on their lunch hours all the time. I have a VERY flexible office environment and while I love my job and am not looking to leave, if I wanted to interview for a job on Monday I could email my boss, RIGHT NOW, and make arrangements to take a long lunch.
3. Currently employed workers may be perpetually dissatisfied "job hoppers" who will not stay long with the company. This is especially true if they list many different past employers.
This is also true is the resume of the unemployed person shows many jobs...what does employment status have to do with job hopping?
4. Hiring the currently unemployed may qualify the employer for various tax credits, such as welfare to Work Opportunity Tax Credits, thereby reducing the employer's tax liability.
Only by a little...and if the cost of training them is high because their skill set is out of date, well, then there goes any benefit.
5. Discriminating against the unemployed is a risky practice as it could constitute illegal disparate impact discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and potentially provide bad publicity for the employer.
Not even a little as in order to have disparate impact you have to have a protected class. Not hiring the unemployed is not illegal. And, if that is the only criteria used, and it is across the board, there is no issue.
Can anyone think of other business reasons to hire the unemployed?
Hiring the unemployed, gives those people more income, which is circulated in the money supply (M1).
Its all a circular effect... more disposable income to spend, for goods and services.
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1. Unemployed or employed, we never start anyone in less than two weeks from offer acceptance, it takes that long to get everything set up for a workstation, user ids and passwords, appointments for benefit orientation and so on. So there is no advantage to the employer.
2. No one cares how the person got time off to interview, in fact, if the applicant looks really good on paper we can schedule it for after hours or rarely even on the weekend.
3. Unemployed people may also be job hoppers, that's a matter of reviewing the application resume.
4. There is no tax liability for public agencies, but you may be right for private sector jobs.
5. The unemployed are not yet a protected class, though a handful of politicians have talked about such a law. It would be awfully hard to prove, though, unless they are dumb enough (as some are) to advertise that they will not consider the unemployed.
Other than the possible tax benefit I cannot think of other business reasons to hire the unemployed over the employed. I will continue to hire the best person for the job regardless.
You obviously do not understand the concept of disparate impact (sometimes referred to as adverse impact). Being unemployed is not a protected class (except in NJ), nonetheless refusing to hire unemployed individuals may have a discriminatory impact against various protected classes (such as a specific race or sex).
Generally, the 80% rule is used when assessing whether employment criteria are discriminatory. That is, does the use of a certain selection criteria (such as must be employed) result in a protected class hiring rate that is less than 80% of the hiring rate of the applicants who are not members of that protected class.
For example, if a rule forbidding hiring of the unemployed only results in 10% of male applicants being hired, but results in 50% of female applicants being hired, then disparate clearly exists (being male is a protected class). In order for an employer to defend itself in such a situation, it would have to show that the rule against hiring the unemployed was validated (ie: shown to be job related).
Refusing to hire the unemployed may or may not be illegal.
1. Unemployed or employed, we never start anyone in less than two weeks from offer acceptance, it takes that long to get everything set up for a workstation, user ids and passwords, appointments for benefit orientation and so on. So there is no advantage to the employer.
2. No one cares how the person got time off to interview, in fact, if the applicant looks really good on paper we can schedule it for after hours or rarely even on the weekend.
3. Unemployed people may also be job hoppers, that's a matter of reviewing the application resume.
4. There is no tax liability for public agencies, but you may be right for private sector jobs.
5. The unemployed are not yet a protected class, though a handful of politicians have talked about such a law. It would be awfully hard to prove, though, unless they are dumb enough (as some are) to advertise that they will not consider the unemployed.
Other than the possible tax benefit I cannot think of other business reasons to hire the unemployed over the employed. I will continue to hire the best person for the job regardless.
You don't care if someone was interviewing while they were on the clock and supposed to be working or if they lied to their employer in order to get the time off? Also, being unemployed is not a protected class, but refusing to hire the unemployed may have a discriminatory impact on certain protected classes (see my above post on this issue or read the case Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424).
Hiring the unemployed, gives those people more income, which is circulated in the money supply (M1).
Its all a circular effect... more disposable income to spend, for goods and services.
I agree, though that reason may not be enough to convince individual employers (I'm trying to change minds in this post) as the isolated effect on the economy of one employer's decision to hire the unemployed is likely to be minimal (though the aggregate effect of all employers being willing to hire the unemployed is likely measurable and possibly substantial).
Unfortunately, that all too often doesn't happen as many employers prefer people who can bs their way through irrelevant questions such as "if you could be any character from Alice and Wonderland, which would you be?" And the bsers aren't always the best workers. Also, qualified candidates are regularly excluded for questionable reasons such as being unemployed, speaking with a slight monotone, not using sufficiently vibrant body language, not being exactly like the interviewer, etc. More emphasis needs to be given to the candidate's job knowledge and skills.
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