Preparing your data for an Affirmative Action Plan is an essential component of your overall compliance strategy. In this presentation, we'll focus on how to prepare your applicant flow data. Specifically, we'll discuss the kinds of data required, and talk about how and why bad or missing applicant flow data can render a data set useless for analysis purposes. Simple techniques for scrubbing data will be presented, and the webinar will conclude with a summary of common data validation tools.

1. Preparing Your Data
for an Affirmative Action Plan:
Applicant Flow
presented by
Carla Irwin
President of Carla Irwin & Associates
and
Stephanie R. Thomas, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO of Thomas Econometrics

2. About the Webinar Series
• “Getting Back To Basics”
• Upcoming schedule:
– 11/30: Compensation
• Series 2: “OFCCP Scheduling Letter
Preparedness”

3. Overview
• Data requirements
• Missing data and its effects
• Data scrubbing and validation

4. Required Data
• Person‐level data
• Fields to be populated
– Date of Application;
– Requisition Number;
– Candidate Name/Number;
– Job Title Applied For;
– Race/Gender/Ethnicity;
– Last Selection Step/Disposition Code;
– Source;
– Location.

5. Expanded Candidate Information
• Employment history / years of prior relevant experience
• Educational history
• Skills, abilities & qualifications
• Availability (FT/PT, days during the week available for
work, hours during the day available for work, etc.)
• Compensation expectations / demands
• Link back to candidate disposition codes

6. Required Documentation
• Electronically‐maintained information used in
recruiting and hiring:
– Copies of job postings (including where advertised)
– Social media information obtained on candidates;
– Pre‐employment screening results
– Background check results (including signed consent forms for criminal & credit
histories, social media searches)
– Postings with State employment office
– Outreach efforts (including written agreements);
– Agreements with third‐party recruiters / vendors;
– Anything else relied upon in your recruiting and hiring process

7. Common Missing Data Points
• Requisition number
• Voluntarily disclosed demographic
information
• Source
• Last selection step
• Description disposition codes

8. Common Data Pitfalls
• Requisition Issues
• Candidate Identification Issues
• Specific vacancies versus “any job available”
• Hiring candidate into job for which (s)he didn’t apply
• “Steering” Issues
• Disposition codes and rejection reasons
• Multiple hires per requisition

9. Applicant Tracking Issues
• Basic Qualifications
• Other Than Online Recruiting
– Referrals
– Campus/Job Fairs
– Agencies
– Unsolicited Resumes
• Internal/External Searches

10. The Effect of Missing Data
• Bad Data = Bad AAP
• Inaccurate conclusions
– Where are your real issues?
• Time / Expense / Resources
– Internal cost
– External cost
• Audit & Litigation Issues

11. Data Scrubbing & Validation
• Do We Have the Right People?
• Do We Have the Right Codes?
• Are We Consistent?
• Where Are Our Data Gaps?

12. Data Scrubbing & Validation
It’s an interactive process

13. Conclusion
• Applicant flow is the beginning of the employment
process – errors here can feed through all selection
decisions
• Discrimination in hiring practices will always be a
focus for the OFCCP
• Documentation, procedures and analysis necessary
to identify issues and business justifications

14. Carla Irwin
President of Carla Irwin & Associates
cirwin@hrlinkgroup.com
815.254.0690
www.carlairwininc.com
&
Stephanie R. Thomas, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO of Thomas Econometrics
sthomas@thomasecon.com
215.642.0072
www.thomasecon.com