1. Chapter Three Hiring Ethical People
Visit for the latest in business news stories.

2. Chapter 3 Screen job candidates for their ethics
Understand which job candidate factors are illegal to consider when hiring
Obtain accurate behavior information from resumes, reference checks, background checks, and integrity tests
Use personality test scales that measure ethics
Ask interview questions that address ethical issues
Understand when drug and polygraph tests can be administered
Chapter 3
Learning Objectives
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

3. Importance of an Ethics Screen
The most important factor for developing and reinforcing a high-integrity work culture is hiring ethical job applicants
The typical hiring process consists of reviewing resumes and job application forms for knowledge, skills and abilities necessary to perform the job task
Ethics is often assumed or overlooked
Maximizing ethical work behaviors begins with the hiring process
One bad hire can make the daily life of many employees miserable
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

4. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 1: ethics screen notice
Inform potential job applicants about the organization’s ethics job screen
People who behave ethically want to be members of ethical organizations
People who behave unethically are not likely to apply for jobs with organizations that advertise the strength of their ethics job-screening process
Some job applicants may be concerned that the ethics screen is an invasion of privacy
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

5. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 2: legal ground rules
Gather and use information in a way that does not discriminate against job candidates based on their race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, or disability
Employers signal good ethics to job candidates by respecting the law when recruiting and selecting employees
Many federal and state laws now govern the types of information an employer can gather on job candidates and the reasons an employer can invoke for selecting one ob candidate over another
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

6. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Legal Ground Rules (cont.)
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
Prohibits businesses from discriminating among job applicants based on the person’s race, color, religion, gender, or national origin
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was created in 1965 to oversee provisions of the Civil Rights Act
Three major exceptions to Title VII:
If an organization employs fewer than 15 people-small businesses are exempted from many regulations so as not to overwhelm them with regulatory compliance burdens
If an organization serves a religious purpose
If it is a bona fide occupational qualification
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

7. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Legal Ground Rules (cont.)
Disparate Impacts
Disparate impacts occur when members of a protected class rarely make it through all the job –screening filters, suggesting that one of the decision rules could be unintentionally discriminatory
An organization’s gender, racial, and ethnic employee profile should reflect the gender, racial, and ethnic profile of people living in the geographical region qualified to perform the job task
Some personality tests and background checks may also result in disparate impacts
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

8. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Legal Ground Rules (cont.)
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action plans remedy past discriminatory behaviors by actively seeking, hiring, and promoting minority group members and women to equalize opportunities previously limited to Caucasian males
Affirmative action plans remain controversial
The EEOC requires federal contractors and subcontractors to have an affirmative action plan that demonstrates commitment to the government’s goal of equal employment opportunities
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

9. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Legal Ground Rules (cont.)
Other legal Issues
Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, amended in 1978 and 1986
Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

10. Exhibit 3.2 Job Selection Rule Checklist
Insert Exhibit 3.2
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

11. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 3: behavioral information
Four recruiting tools provide
useful behavioral information
about a job candidate’s
ethics:
Resumes
Reference checks
Background checks
Integrity tests
Behavioral information about a job candidate’s ethics is more reliable than attitudinal survey results or responses to hypothetical dilemmas
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

12. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Behavioral Information (cont.)
Resumes
The best predictor of future performance is past performance
A job candidate’s previous accomplishments are encapsulated on a resume or job application
Researchers estimate that more than one in five resumes contain lies
20% of the students who submitted resumes to the Rutgers University Career Services inflated their grade point averages
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

13. Exhibit 3.3 College Students Job Application Lies
Insert Exhibit 3.3
False information or inconsistencies on resumes and job applications suggest a lack of ethics and trustworthiness
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

14. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Behavioral Information (cont.)
Reference Checks
Job candidates usually list references predisposed to sharing favorable information
The previous supervisor’s perspective of the job candidate’s strengths and weaknesses is probably the most relevant information source
For management positions, request the names of previous subordinates as references
If a former employer or supervisor will only confirm dates of employment, then quickly ask, “Would you hire this person again?”
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

15. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Behavioral Information (cont.)
Background Checks
Conduct background checks to verify a job candidate’s academic accomplishments, prior work responsibilities, and other work-related issues
Other checks could include criminal records, credit checks, and Facebook use
Approximately half of human resource managers surveyed perform due diligence by inserting a job candidate’s name in an internet search engine
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

16. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Behavioral Information (cont.)
Integrity Tests
Also referred to as honesty tests, integrity tests typically gather information about the job candidate’s behaviors and attitudes toward unethical workplace activities, such as theft
Recent research has found that individuals with low integrity test scores at the time of employment, compared to those with higher scores, are more likely to later engage in theft, have high absenteeism, break rules, cheat, and become disciplinary problems
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

17. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 4: personality traits and related characteristics
“Conscientiousness” measures responsibility, dependability, and work ethic. Is the best predictor of ethics and job performance.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior: work-related helping behaviors that go beyond normal job requirements, such as aiding others with job-related problems
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

18. Exhibit 3.4 Personality Traits, Related Characteristics, and Ethical Behavior
Insert Exhibit 3.4
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

19. Exhibit 3.6 Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale
Insert Exhibit 3.6
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

20. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 4 (cont.)
Social Dominance Orientation and Bullying is the belief that an individual’s particular group membership (defined in terms of race, gender, religion, or ethnicity) is superior to membership in other groups
Researchers have found that high SDO scores are associated with racism and sexism
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

21. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 4 (cont.)
Mental Disability Tests
Mental health and other medical tests for job candidates can be administered after a bona fide job offer has been made
Tests such as the MMPI are not a valid way to determine the ethics of job candidates
Mental and physical disabilities have protected class status under the Americans with Disabilities Act
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

22. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 5: Interview Questions
Previous Ethical Dilemmas
Asking job candidates to describe how they managed an ethical dilemma at a previous employer can be very useful
Human beings are creatures of habit, and the job candidate will bring these response patterns to work
Sensitize job candidates to real-life ethical dilemmas current employees have experienced and ask how they would respond
Ethics questions about previous work experiences must be job related
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

23. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 5: Interview Questions (cont.)
Visual Lie Detection
Behavioral responses assumed to be cures for detecting a lie include the following:
Bodily Tendencies: less eye contact, increased blinking, pupil dilation, fidgeting, shaking knee, tapping fingers…
Verbal Tendencies: Hesitancy in responding, frequent speech disturbances, sighs, higher pitch, longer response before answering…
There is some truth that these bodily and verbal tendencies, or a combination of them may suggest lying, but not enough truth to generalize to the specific person being interviewed. Sometimes honest individuals exhibit the assumed tendencies of liars
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

24. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 5 (cont.) Present finalists with a realistic job preview, an honest description of daily work activities that highlights both the exciting and tedious aspects of the job
Researchers have found that an honest and balanced presentation of the actual job experience does not reduce acceptance rates
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

25. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 6: Post-Interview Tests
Drug Testing
Drug use can be determined by an analysis of blood, urine, hair, or saliva. Marijuana, the most commonly tested for drug, can be detected in the blood system for 2 days, in urine from 2-14 days, and in hair follicles for up to 90 days
Urinalysis is the most often used method for preemployment drug testing. It is also the most personally invasive
Hair testing is less invasive than urinalysis and has greater validity. However, it takes longer to obtain laboratory results from hair tests
Analyzing saliva is noninvasive, easy to collect, and results can be obtained in a few minutes. But saliva is useful only for determining drug use during the previous two days
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

26. The Six-Step Ethics Job Screen Process
Step 6 (cont.)
Polygraphs
Also known as lie detectors, can be used as a job screen by federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as businesses, engaged in national security issues
The scientific community concluded that polygraphs detected anxieties, not lies. The court system agreed with them and ruled that polygraph results could not be presented in a court of law
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics

27. Exhibit 3.9 Standard Job Screening Polygraph Questions
Insert Exhibit 3.9
Chapter 3: Collins, Business Ethics