In order for organizations to ensure job equity, sometimes preferential hiring occurs wherein the hiring managers have a tendency to recruit more of underrepresented users in the business, stressing less on the person-job fit. Less competent girl employees are employed when there is a directive to the hiring manager that girls are underrepresented in the company. The problem of discrimination in hiring has been prevalent despite government legislation and occupation equity programs by companies. Traditional man dominated profession like the authorities force and female dominated occupation like medical has been at the mercy of gender role stereotyping while selecting. The perception that man has more of certain characteristics like dominance, hostility, stamina and women possesses more of certain capabilities like nurturance and homemaking has led to the stereotyping in certain occupations like police which is viewed as a usually masculine job or medical which is viewed as a traditionally feminine job. Men in woman dominated organizations are usually marketed to more reliable positions. Eg. Men chosen in the medical professions are generally marketed to "nursing management", which is a more legitimate profession. That is known as the "glass escalator effect" ( (Eddy S. Ng, Dec, 2007)
Organizations believing interpersonal dominance theory promote inequality and legitimized discrimination on the basis of gender while selecting (Eddy S. Ng, Dec, 2007). Alternatively organizations pursing affirmative action bring career equity in their hiring process. Hence these organizations have significantly more minority candidates in their program pool. The minority applicants appointed under this preferential criterion were less experienced, but were believe it or not in performance during the interview when compared with the best competent individuals (Eddy S. Ng, Dec, 2007). It is debated that preferential hiring programmes by companies chasing affirmative action plans, brings about allocating careers to under experienced candidates, which ultimately reduces efficiency of the company. Regarding to George Sher "A person is preferentially hired if see your face is hired instead of somebody else who better satisfies the hiring criteria and is given the benefit by moral considerations" (Philips, Feburary 1991). But the "accepted hiring criteria", against which the qualifications of candidates are assessed, may be inherently flawed. Consider for example a company A is hiring on the first-come-first-serve basis for 5 available positions, while a company B is employing form a pool of 50 to 100 people because of its 5 wide open positions. Company A will choose the first 5 who meets the "fair and accepted hiring requirements" (Philips, Feburary 1991). Company B, on the other palm has a reasonably large applicant pool and can select the best performing candidates among that pool. Hence even though company A is selecting by the rulebook, it might select less skilled prospects than company B, because of its first-come standards. Thus preferential hiring does not necessarily mean hiring less qualified applicants for the work. Company B, which includes an affirmative action strategy, does preferential hiring, but it has an enormous applicant pool and strict selection process, which selects the best performers, definitely not the best experienced. The issue, that preferential hiring causes inefficiencies within the company is definitely not true.
Fairness and ethical hiring practices
Fairness and ethics in hiring practices is considered paramount by potential job candidates. Ethical hiring in effect is determined by how the potential employer conducts the hiring process rather than by the outcome of the hiring for the applicants or for the business. The potential employer is the face of the business to the work applicant. Thus ethical behaviour by the hiring manager promotes ethical principles of the organization and builds self-confidence and determination about the organization in the brains of the actual hires. On the other hand, treating candidates unfairly leaves an unfavourable image of the organization on the candidates. Many people consider the interview process of a business as a standard of how the organization operates. Hence job applicants who are treated unfairly in the interview process are likely to dissuade others from joining the organization plus they themselves would turn down their selection offer most probably. Even if indeed they admit the offer after an unethical or unfair interview process, they are likely be less devoted towards the company and less likely to develop emotional bond for the organization.
Hiring procedures are generally well noted in organizations and hiring managers don't possess much latitude, but to adhere to the rules and rules. But mere conformity with the guidelines does not provide the choice process as ethical. A hiring process is lawfully compliant if it can examine all the prospects and determines who will perform best at the work. This in effect means that all the individuals to be cared for evenly; the hiring professionals conduct set up interviews, pre-planned and performance based; use a number of tools for selection and lastly go beyond the legal compliance to ensure fairness in employing. Keeping this at heart, there major honest perspectives, utilitarianism, protection under the law and duties and fairness and justice (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006) can be explored for relevance in hiring process.
Utilitarianism in moral context sees the best good for biggest number of men and women as the most crucial value (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). In case a choice has to be made between an action which will have the best good for the greatest number of men and women vis- -vis an action which will please a person or several individuals however, not result in the best good for the best number of people, then the past action should be chosen regarding to Utilitarianism. At the organization level a administrator following the moral suggestions of utilitarianism would choose an individual who would be best licensed and fit for the organization as a whole and not his own division or team. If selection of best prospect for a job results in highly skewed demographic distributions then according to utilitarian theory, the employing practices of the company must be altered to increase variety which is best for the society. A corporation which requires a diverse workforce might choose the best qualified people form a pool of candidates, but they need not enhance variety (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). Hence the objective would not be to choose only the best qualifying prospects, but have a set up and stringent interview process which will choose the best performing applicants and the hiring criteria needs to be such that it provides greatest best for the greatest number of people. To improve the hiring conditions to fit utilitarian perspective, affirmative action need to be considered. The first affirmative action way is to remove biases (gender, contest, time) from the hiring managers. The second is to remove barriers that might result in underrepresentation of certain communities. Eg. When a company is hiring through internet advertising, then it also offers to address those people who don't possess access to internet, but nonetheless well experienced for the job. This can be done by advertising in print multimedia and other job publications or advertising on radio. The 3rd procedure is to increase variety by giving extra things for gender, contest etc (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). Eg. In the selection of IIM's almost all of the institutes gives extra credits to female candidates and non-engineers to increase variety among the list of batch. Also, in america, a huge untapped pool of qualified employees who have physical disabilities, are left unutilized. If only 1 million of these disabled employees can be employed then the US government can have 21. 2 billion gross annual increases in income and around 4 billion of savings in food stamps and unemployment subsidies (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). Thus for an organization selecting a disabled worker over one without disability may have negligible effects, but also for the contemporary society and the current economic climate at large they have significant impact. In conclusion, thus utilitarian selecting ethics requires the manager to think beyond short term effects of hiring decisions on the business and its immediate beneficiaries and focus more on its impact on the culture.
The second honest perspective, rights and duties, areas that an take action is ethical if it respects the protection under the law of others and performs the duties that are by virtue of that right (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). For example if one has the right to personal privacy then it is our responsibility to leave him by themselves. Broadly there is there protection under the law in the honest construction, relevant for selecting; position rights, individual rights and people' privileges.
Position protection under the law: The potential employer, by virtue of his position gets the right to recruit the prospect whom he finds best possible one of the pool of candidates. Thus when there is a vacancy for 2 positions and 10 people trying to get the job, then the manager has the right to reject 8. But the manager should exercise his right responsibly and treatment should be studied to evaluate the candidate based on the job requirements, so that the manager can defeat his personal bias.
Human Privileges: To hold the human privileges of the applicant, the supervisor should be accountable to protect the level of privacy of the applicant and really should also value his personal dignity. The administrator thus should be translucent in the hiring process and really should tell the truth in advance, providing the candidates honest evaluation and upgrading them about their position.
Citizens' Protection under the law: The people' right entails that applicant should be treated as identical and the supervisor shouldn't discriminate and reject a prospect based on age, gender, and ethnicity.
By respecting these previously listed privileges, fairness in the hiring process of the business may be accomplished.
The third perspective, Fairness and justice; claims that justice can be carried out by being reasonable to all those influenced by the decision. The three main types of organizational justice are, procedural, distributive and interactional justice (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006).
Distributive justice: A justice is distributive and supports equity, if it does not predict different outcome for different subgroups (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006). Equity in the hiring process prevails when no discrimination is done and selection is based on selecting the best performing applicant. Hence according to distributive justice, fairness in selection is set if it preserves the protection under the law of minority subgroups in the hiring process.
Procedural Justice: Procedural justice areas that not only the results of the hiring process should be reasonable regarding to distributive justice, but strategies for decision making should also be good. Sometimes recognized fairness in the process lessens the effects of recognized unjust effects (G. Stoney Alder, November 2006).
Interactional Justice: Interactional justice areas that individuals not only care about the fairness of results or procedures, but also take into account the quality of social treatment they obtain from others. Fairness seems to be high when people are treated with dignity, politeness and value and low when they are cared for rudely or harassed. Interactional justice is thus very important in hiring to mention the note of fairness among the list of applicants.
Building on these 3 pillars of ethical hiring practices, employing managers can develop the psychological contract among applicants at the time of hiring.
