1 2 The job opportunity that I would like to utilize for the scenario is a Customer Service Professional. A Customer Service Professional or Customer Pro is an extensive occupation class that describes an individual who provides senior level customer service support to the consumer and customers of an organization. Within my organization this position was held in the company's loyalty department and aided the customers who either were looking to leave the company, escalated past management, or requested assistance from the CEO of the company. The selection and recruitment process is the most important part of a company's venture in selecting the right candidate for a position. The recruitment methods utilized allow a company to determine the person with the right job skills, employ proper background checks, have successful interviews, and helps reduce the turnover ratio after selection. However, before this process begins we must first determine what laws we should consider prior to developing the recruitment methods that will be used in the hiring process. There are several regulations, policies, and governing entities that human resource managers must abide by to be fair in the hiring process. Taking these laws in consideration allows qualified potential employees a fair process without discrimination or biases. For Instance, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers from discriminating against covered employees or workers because of race, religion, gender, or nationality (National Archives, 2016). In addition, there are the affirmative action policies which establish hiring quotas for qualifying companies. This quota requires inclusion of all people, specifically minorities in the workforce. The business entities who meet certain criteria are required to hire and promote a precise number of minorities or people in protected groups (Messerli, 2010). In this modern era, we are in a world where everything happens so fast and where we insistently try to save time, it may be enticing to try to get rid of what is less important. However, 3 when it comes to an effective recruiting strategy to hire new talent for a position within an organization, there are steps that should not be ignored. Many may deem some of the recruiting strategy steps to be unnecessary, however they are needed to maintain an all-inclusive selection process. HR directors have no choice other than using the best recruitment methods that will give the excellent and smart candidates for the job. Furthermore, applicants selected for interview and potential hiring should come from a diverse background. Enable to be successful the hiring process should include the following: an initial job posting/job description, selection process, pre-interview assessment, phone interview, in house interview. The initial job posting, if posted on the right platform (i.e. job search engines, university bulletin boards, newspapers, and company website) can prove to be successful in reaching the right candidates. As a HR manager, the job posting should give the candidates the job requirements enable to be considered a candidate for the job. The candidates should have demonstrated teamwork, had prior or similar experience in the field, be innovative, have the educational background needed, and can multitask and work in an ever-changing environment. The selection of candidates for interview many HR directors/managers utilize a platform that pulls applications based on key words and phrases. This eliminates the many candidates who are not qualified or lack experience. The pre-interview assessment is needed to verify the candidates in questions skill sets needed to perform the job, potential ideals and core values, and how their values and ideals match with that of the company. The information revealed in assessment will identify aspects of their personality that will have an impact on their overall performance, and with which the candidates will be more comfortable. 4 Telephone interview- first impressions are always the lasting impression. The telephone interview is needed to get a true feel and sense of an individual's personality and how it will align with the position and if they can connect and convey their actions and communicate efficiently and effectively. The in-house interview is completed if the potential candidate performs well and sets a great impression over the phone. This interview allows the HR managers to further determine the candidates fit based upon the assessment, information stated on the resume, and information provided by the candidate via the phone interview. Recruitment has the procedure that is achieved to accept the applicant to give him or her a job when qualified. The outline of the process includes; advertisement and key selection criteria to be met by the candidates, close of the application and submission of the applicant is made by this time, assessment of the application assessment to choose the qualified candidates, selection of the panel to interviews the candidates, assessment of the applicants by reviewing the candidates resumes, collection of academic transcripts, verification of certificates and other added qualifications of the sort-listed candidates, offering of the job to the qualified candidates and offering of post-interviews feedback. The selection demonstrates skills that the organization needs by asking the relevant questions to the applicants. This ensures the candidates selected is one qualified for the skills that are needed to manage the operations with the organization. Hence, the best candidates that qualify by meeting the requirement of a job description and the application skills is given the new job, and orientation is done for the new applicant to familiarize with the working environment and start working. HR department has the role to maintain and keep all the applicant records in case the discriminatory charges arises. This will serve to give evidence to the applicant that he or she qualified for the job or not. The five-step procedure for the HR department to maintain an 5 applicant's record in case of discriminatory charges should include the following: identifying and prioritizing confidential information by keeping the information per value and keeping the data of the applicants that has been used for the job recruitment. This shows what has been used to recruit the candidates for the job. Secondly, the HR manager should study the current flow of information through the organization to better understand the candidate's work flow and if they can meet or exceed their position expectations. The HR manager should determine appropriate usage, information-distribution and access. This ensures the policies are not violated by creating a procedural way of the record retrieval to avoid manipulation of some applicant records. This ensures the records are not interfered with in any way. In addition, the HR manager should focus on implementing, enforcing, and monitoring the system utilized to protect the records of candidates/employees. It would be wise to review the progress of the system to verify that the records are properly recorded and sealed to protect the employee and the company from due process. Furthermore, every record that has been received by the HR department should be kept in a secure environment to enhance easy retrieval in case of the discriminatory charges arises from the applicant. This will assist with solving the cases efficiently and effectively and prevent the company from spending extreme amounts of time and money to retrieve this information, if such events arise. As an organization, HR department should enhance the relationship between the employees and the customers is beneficial. This should be checked by analyzing the responses of the customers through mass media and other related platform of communication. This gives a hand to aid in improving the delivery of services and goods to customers by meeting their demands. Coordination among the employees is very crucial, and the department HR department has the role to create good connections of the employees within the organization. This facilitates 6 smooth delivery and communication within the operations of the organization. Creating a special department that stores the data and records within the organization to be used to evaluate the progress of the employees. This will be used in the process of job promotion and rewarding the best performers that will reciprocate the other employees to work smart for the organization. Employments tests should be carried by the interviews to get the capability of the employees. Intelligence and skills tests carried helps to get the employee, who will have the solutions for emerging issues that needs an immediate solution for the company. For example, the marketing through technology should be incorporated and create a trust to the customers by convincing them also doing shopping online is safe with your company. Psychological tests in another side will help the employee to relate with his colleagues and their customers in an appropriate manner (Van, 2004). As an employee, one should handle his customers in a decent manner and show him or her the need to purchase his products and answer all the questions of his customer. Honesty tests are one of the employment tests to see if one is a reliable leader within the organization or as a junior employee. Hence, one should be honesty in delivering his services to the customers and in various department of the organization. For example, as a director one must avoid diversion of the money other personal issues instead one should use the fund for the appropriate project as proposed by the organization. Background checks are used to track the operations runs smoothly by using management skills to monitor the employees in work. Absence should be avoided and creates job rotation to avoid the boredom of the work. Employment tests then serve to get the best person to be employed based on the skills demonstrated by the candidates during these tests. Typically the background check is standard company policy of any and all candidates hired for positons. Generally, it is important to look at 7 education, criminal history, and previous employment and even credit history. On average a criminal check will go back 7 years to determine any potential felonies or misdemeanors. The education is verified for all levels the candidate lists on their resume/application. The previous employers are verified by what is listed as well. The extensive verification process is completed to avoid any potential legal action regarding fraud and identity theft. Medical records, as an employer it may be relevant to request only about an applicant's ability to perform specific job duties. In these cases, the employer may not request an employee's medical records as this is protected by the law. An employer may not make a job decision based on an employee's disability, if the employee can do the job, with or without a reasonable accommodation the given circumstances. During job recruitment, it must be based on merits of the candidates in regarding the academic qualifications, experiences and any related achievement of the job. This helps to eliminate the many applicants and get the best candidates. This will make it clear when hiring employees and make job promotion depending on the achievement in tasks performance of the candidates. The major challenge of this kind of policy is that one may choose a candidate who is excellent in academic work but very poor in the field. The candidates also may research the likely interview questions related to the job, but he or she may not apply the skills to practical work that awaits in the field. The adverse impact of this leads to incurring losses of the organization that leads to stagnation of the organization (Gourgourinis, 2016). This happens because it is only the sample of skills that are tested not putting into consideration some of the business skills applicable in the practical field. To cater for accommodations of disabled applicants and applicants with special religious considerations, as an organization, we have set aside rooms for these groups of the applicant 8 within the organization. Additionally, we have corporates with landlords neighboring the organization to put aside the rooms of these groups of people. It aims to take care of them because of their special needs and considerations and needs respectively. For the disable applicant one may not be aware of the kind of the disability and the kind of attention one needs when accommodating creating problems when the need arises. For special religious one has his beliefs per a religious background that may not be aware of the persons providing the accommodation. There have been many cases where companies have been charged with affirmative action violations and with not managing harassment issues more expeditiously. There was a case were an employee was discharged from a job opportunity for becoming pregnant. Therefore, without the appropriate procedure, the female employee had to go home, but she had to report the organization to the court for violating his rights. Affirmative action was taken against the organization, and the employee was compensated. This case is known in public record as Latowski v. Northwoods Nursing Center, 549 Fed. Appx. 478 (6th Cir. 2013). When a nursing home learned one of its nursing assistants, Jennifer Latowski, was pregnant, it required her to provide a doctor's note stating she had no work restrictions. Ms. Latowski could not produce such a note, and the company later terminated her. Consequently, the organization should have the appropriate policies of giving the leave to pregnant women working in the organization. Managerial harassment arose because one of the employees requested for a study leave of one year. Since the management was not ready to hire another threatened him with losing the job despite following the policies of channeling his request. Hence, the individual sought the court assistance, and the organization was requested to give the study leave. It is recommended, 9 the procedure of applying for study leave should be explicit to both the employee and the management. This will give all the procedures to be followed in an application for the leave and avoid court charges to the organization. Work-life conflict can present itself in several ways: One life off the job may interfere with work responsibilities, two work responsibilities may interfere with life off the job, and conditions at work may positively or negatively \"spread out\" to personal life. Three personal lives may positively or negatively \"overflow\" to ones work life. The company should introduce family friendly benefits that benefit through reduction in absenteeism. Sickness may also fall because of reduced pressure on the employees. Workers who are healthy and less stressed are more efficient. Minimizing work role conflict can help prevent role overload and help people have a more satisfying working life, fulfilling their potential both in paid work and outside. Work life balance can minimize stress and fatigue at work, enabling people to have safer and healthier working lives. Workplace stress and exhaustion can add to injuries a work and at home. The company therefore should create a favorable environment to ease on work life conflicts. A good disciplinary system should also be put in place to avoid encouraging behaviors that might bring about work life stress as well as other work related problems amongst employees. A good disciplinary system is the result of having a clear idea of what one want to accomplish with one's disciplinary system. Does one want to punish or do one want to correct and educate? In formulating one's discipline philosophy and program, consider: one, which basic steps and features a discipline program should contain two, whether progressive discipline would work for one and three, whether regular performance reviews can avoid the need for much disciplinary action. 10 While a progressive discipline system may seem like a high-maintenance way to control employee behavior, it does have definite advantages. For example, the existence of a formal progressive step-by-step discipline system conveys to employees that they are not being targeted and procedures are properly being followed. When a progressive disciplinary system is adequately communicated, employees remain informed of where they stand within the organization. Having a definite and consistently applied disciplinary system ensures employees who never need to be disciplined that those who do need to be disciplined will be. However, a formal progressive discipline policy provides the business with a system that is fair and effortlessly justifiable against a challenge. These advantages are compelling ones, especially for businesses trying to build and sustain high employee morale. As is true with most policies, though, there are also some disadvantages to progressive discipline.Formal discipline can be an involved process. For very small businesses, it may be too involved to invest time in, especially if there are few discipline problems. A progressive discipline system requires that everyone with disciplinary authority be trained, fully knowledgeable of the policy, and willing to assume responsibility for administering the discipline steps. There may be a lot of documentation and follow-up work necessary to administer the plan. One needs to have an official, written policy. This policy need not be distributed to the employees, but one must have it so that one can be sure it's followed consistently. One run the risk of guaranteeing a process that must be followed. Even if one don't print up the policy and give it to employees, one would be, in effect, telling employees how far they can go. In the event of a challenge, this information can be subpoenaed. Thus, it could be shown in court that one's actions differed from one's own written policy, which always makes one look bad. To the extent that areas of employee conduct are 11 governed by a progressive discipline system, generally the at-will position of employees may be changed. If one decides to implement a formal progressive discipline policy, one will need to formulate a written policy, even if one does not give it to the employees and it is recommended that one does not give it. Other business's policies may serve as excellent models but be sure one's policy is appropriate for one's business and one's employees. Specification of which behaviors or infringements of work rules are not subject to progressive discipline -usually these will be serious behaviors that warrant immediate termination. Decide whether to advise all employees of the policy, what one's progressive discipline steps are, how the policy is to be applied, and what the policy does not address. Decide how one will maintain documentation that is memos about oral warnings, written warnings, among others. Decide if documentation will remain in a file forever and, if not, under what circumstances and timing the documentation can be removed from the file. Establish a procedure for maintaining the documentation and protecting the confidentiality of the information. 12 References Beier, Chris. (2002). The 4 Hiring Practices of Highly Successful Organizations. Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/articles/2002/01/23815.html Clark, Charles. (1991). "Sexual Harassment: Men and Women in Workplace Power Struggles." Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Garner, R. (2009). Human resource management and development New York: Wiley Jiambalvo, James. (2009) International Labor policies, John Wiley & Sons, Messerli, Joe. (2010). \"Should affirmative action policies, which give preferential treatment based on minority status, be eliminated?\" Retrieved from http://www.balancedpolitics.org/affirmative_action.htm National Archives. (2016) \"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,\" Retrieved from https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act Recent EEOC Pregnancy-Discrimination Litigation. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/pregnancy_fact_sheet_litigation.cfm Segal, Jonathan A. (2014). LEGAL TRENDS Social Media Use in Hiring: Assessing the Risks. Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0914-socialmedia-hiring.aspx