PPB October 2019

4 Be ready for sticker shock. In today’s talent- friendly market, if candidates are actively searching, they typically have multiple offers on the table. If you are actively recruiting, you must be ready and able to take decisive action on hiring. And be ready for sticker shock. Qualified professionals in the market today are expecting 15-20 percent more in compensation than they did in recent years. The reason candidates are asking so much is because they can get it—if not with your company, then with your competitor. And if you want to know howmuch you’ll need to pay for qualified talent, just conduct a recruiting effort. Your candidates will tell you howmuch they want and that’s the best indication of what the going market rate is for your open position. 5 Stop looking for unicorns. As recruiters, we never want our clients to settle for inadequate talent. But sometimes, their bullseye for the perfect talent is impossible to fill. For example, if you are looking for someone with years of experience, willing to take $35,000 and live within 30 miles of your remote location, chances are that if we can’t find that person after months of searching, he or she doesn’t exist. We often must have these kinds of difficult conversations with our clients: • Your pay is too low for the experience you are seeking. • If you can’t afford experienced talent, you may need to consider less experience. • If there are only a handful of people within 100 miles of your company and none of them are interested in your position, you may need to consider remote workers. No one likes to have these conversations, but after screening hundreds of potential candidates and not finding the unicorn, it’s unlikely that hundreds of unicorns will miraculously appear. Revisit your efforts to date. Have you made one of the mistakes listed above? If so, now is the perfect time to correct, redirect and start again. And remember to stop looking for a unicorn if a reliable workhorse will do. Claudia St. John is president of Affinity HR Group, Inc., PPAI’s affiliated human resources partner. Affinity HR Group specializes in providing human resources assistance to associations such as PPAI and their member companies. www.affinityhrgroup.com . benefits, present them with your offer so the candidate can weigh the benefits as part of the compensation package. Q We are about to hire an independent contractor but want to run a background check on him before we hire him. Can we run a background check on an independent contractor and make the contract contingent on the results? A Yes, if the contractor will have access to sensitive materials or if the nature of his work requires a clean background check then, yes, you can make the contract contingent on that. You should also include language in the contract around confidentiality of information and non- solicitation. But the most important component of your contract should be that the contract does not constitute an employee-employer relationship. Of course, it’s important to make sure that you are classifying the worker correctly—many independent contractors would probably be considered employees if the Department of Labor were to investigate the nature of the work relationship. To make sure your contractor is appropriately classified, check Fact Sheet 13 at www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs13.htm. Q I’ve heard about “Ban the Box” legislation (a campaign aimed at removing from hiring applications the check box that asks if applicants have a criminal record) and we’ve removed all questions about criminal history from our employment application. Are we still allowed to ask about criminal history and run criminal background checks? If so, when? A I can’t speak to your specific “Ban the Box” laws/regulations because they are all somewhat different, but usually they only require that you remove the question box from the application. If you are going to perform a criminal background check later in the process, you may want to let applicants know that on your application. We recommend that employers run background checks either at the end of their hiring process or after a contingent offer of employment has been extended—meaning that you’re offering them employment contingent on a clean background check. And remember, if you decide not to hire someone because of what appears in their background check, you may be legally obligated to provide the background report to them. Howa candidate performs in a personal interview is really an indication of only one thing—how skilled they are at interviewing. Remember, they are salespeople and they are trying to sell you, too. Don’t be sold, be smart. 88 | OCTOBER 2019 | THINK