If you are working with smaller recruitment clients that do not have formal training on best practices and the laws around hiring and firing, you can be a valuable resource. Here’s one your clients likely do not even think about…
Remind employers not to take notes on resumes or applications. These are documents that should remain in an employee file and should also be kept as the outcome of a search to fill and opening. Maybe they did not even know the rules regarding kept documentation as part of a search? If for any reason a legal issue or class-action suit would be initiated against your employer, those documents will be come part of discovery. Some employers are in the habit of noting age, race, national origin, marital status on the resume or application. If the employer then hires 5 single candidates and no married candidates, that can be a future legal issue or worse, a class-action suit.
Even in cases where the employer collected data for the purposes of seeing if their written test had a negative impact on minority hiring, the data became a cause for concern and was used in a class-action suit to call the process potentially biased (Modtland v. Mills Fleet Farm, D. MN).
Interviewers like to be clever and it can be viewed differently by a court or a jury. Consider this one. An interviewer used his own code and made notes on the resume. He wrote “butter knife” on the resume. The intention may not have been discriminatory, but your clients do not want to be in court when the interviewer has to disclose that the code was meant to mean the candidate was not particularly “sharp.”
Intentions are hard to document when the documents do not show a reason for notes on the resume or application. So make sure to reinforce with employers to avoid such documentation. As a recruiter, you can coach your clients or you can follow their lead. I suggest you become a resource by knowing the legal issues around hiring practices better than they do. Become an expert and coach your small recruitment clients and managers to better performance.