Word-of-Mouth Recruiting Fells Staffing Agency in EEOC’s Lawsuit; $415K to Settle Charges

Word-of-mouth recruiting is a risky way to go about the business of finding suitable job applicants to fill your company’s vacancies. You may on occasion find just the person you’re looking for but just as likely the word will get out only to persons of the same race, gender or socio-economic class as the referrer. And that shrinking of the job pool is a recipe for an employment discrimination claim by those who never get the word of the great job opportunity.

That’s the situation that ACM Services, Inc., a Rockville, Md.-based environmental remediation services contractor, found itself in. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently filed suit against the company, alleging that its word-of-mouth recruitment excluded African Americans from fair consideration for hiring as field laborers.

The rot went further, as the company also denied jobs to women and Hispanics and harassed and retaliated against two women based on their sex, race and national origin, the EEOC charged.

The EEOC announced last Thursday that the company had agreed to pay $415,000 to settle the lawsuit and make other numerous changes to its hiring practices.

Among other things, ACM Services will:

• implement numerical goals for hiring qualified black applicants and female applicants, including both permanent and temporary or contingent workers, for field laborer positions;
• create a job opportunities advertisement program to recruit a diverse pool of qualified applicants for field laborer positions and refrain from using word-of-mouth recruiting as its sole method for seeking job applicants;
• conduct extensive self-assessment of hiring and work assignment practices to ensure non-discrimination and compliance with the terms of the consent decree;
• pay for advertising of the class claims process; and
• submit reports to the EEOC concerning numerical hiring goals and other consent decree compliance issues.

The moral of the story: There’s a better, legal way to recruit that recognizes the diversity of the applicant pool and will leave you with a more diverse and qualified workforce.

Here’s more on the case and settlement.