AT WORK
Prevalence of online applications brings up touchy issue of revising rules

By Stephanie Armour
USA Today

Federal rules requiring many companies to keep data about job applicants for a year or more are creating severe hassles for employers inundated with online résumés.

The surge in online applications, due to increasing popularity of the Internet and rising unemployment, has made it more cumbersome for companies to store and track résumés. As a result, the government is developing guidelines that could change how millions of companies handle online recruiting.

It's a tough issue. The rules, established in the 1970s, were intended to ensure that companies don't discriminate of the basis of an applicant's sex, ethnicity or race. Critics fear that a relaxing of regulations could open the way to hiring discrimination.

"It's a huge issue for companies, and it's a hot button," says Barbara Murphy, a spokeswoman at Boeing, which received 790,000 résuméss last year.

More than half of job seekers use fax or e-mail to send résumés, according to a survey this year by CareerBuilder, an online recruitment resource that is partly owned by Gannett, the owner of USA Today. Thirty-three percent send the résumés via e-mail.

The federal rules stipulate:

• Companies with 15 or more employees generally must keep application forms for a year. Federal government contractors with more than 150 employees must keep the information for two years.
• Employers must categorize applicants by sex, race and ethnicity. That allows companies and the government to ensure that screening processes don't discriminate.
• The Labor Department may take enforcement action against a company that fails to comply.

But critics say rules from the '70s don't relate to the Internet age, because race is not evident anyway when online applicants are unseen.

"It's difficult. A lot of (employers) don't consider online job seekers' applicants," says Washington lawyer Larry Lorber, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Labor, who calls the rules outmoded.

New guideline proposals are expected this year — marking the first time that the government would address the definition of a job applicant in the Internet age. Changes could alter how long companies must store résumé data received from online job seekers.

"Employers do have a tremendous record-keeping burden," says Cari Dominguez, chairwoman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "But we have to balance interests. We have to protect the rights of applicants."

Unable to find what it needed on the market, Boeing developed its own system to streamline hiring processes and still meet government rules.

Job applicants are asked for gender, race and other data that are maintained indefinitely to ensure compliance. In April, the system processed 92,000 résumés — a pace that would result in more than 1.1 million résumés this year.