Applicant Tracking

joe1

At what stage of the employment process, is a candidate for employment considered an applicant, and therefore tracked for record purposes? Also, is the tracking requirement different for solicited versus non-solicited employment resumes.

gillian2

Basically, you can define it any way that you want, subject to challenge by an enforcement agency if you ever get a discrimination charge. One extreme is to count everybody, no matter what, as an applicant. There are a lot of downsides to that approach. The other extreme is to count just those who are interviewed. That also has downsides. A middle of the road approach is to count only those who meet the qualifications for the job, but that is hard to do if you let unqualified people fill out applications - means some prescreening must take place. There should be no difference between the handling of solicited vs. unsolicited applications and you can decide not to take unsolicited applications if you want to.

cthr

Actually, if you are an AAP employer you can make a distinction between solicited and non-solicited. If you define an applicant as a person who is applying for a position for which you are actively recruiting, you do not need to count resumes for positions which you are not actively recruiting for. For example, if you are recruiting for sales clerks and some one applies for an IT job, if you have no IT jobs open, that person is not an applicant.

If you are an AAP employer though, you do have to count applicants that you don't interview.

Don D

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 09-08-03 AT 10:10AM (CST)[/font][p]>if you are an AAP employer, though, you do have to count applicant's that you don't interview.

If the original poster is required to have a formal AAP, you DO have to have a logging mechanism with demographics for applicants and can't keep off the log those whom you do not interview. All who express interest via application, resume or walk-in during open recruitment for announced positions are considered applicants by definition. One thing the OFCCP looks for is whether or not you appear to be rejecting applicants, prior to interview, who might appear to fit certain demographics. As I've mentioned in several other posts, we are undergoing a formal AAP review now by OFCCP. So far it's an offsite-desk review of tons of things I sent in to them upon request. One question they have asked, however, regards a job we advertised awhile back but never filled...They inquired as to whether some of the VietNam era vets and minorities who had applied might have, in fact, qualified, and was our decision to not fill the opening based in part on demographics? (Of course it was not. We wanted the job filled and didn't care what the demographics of the people were, but budget constraints nudged us to not fill)

scottorr

If you are not required to have an AAP, you do not have to track unsolicited applications/resumes. Generally we keep all applications for 1 year and interviewed applicant for 2 years. We consider an application an applicant if they are applying for a specific posting or job opening. All others go into the"blue file" for one year.