Is A Pre Employment Assessment Legal?

Is a pre employment assessment legal? Yes; however, take caution to ensure that the screenings are administered fairly during the recruitment and selection process and make sure you don’t skew in favor of any one particular group.

First of all, let’s take a look at the benefits of pre employment testing and screening. A pre employment screening can help you to make sure that you know whether or not the applicant has a criminal history. Likewise, a drug screening can ensure that the person you hire is drug-free, which may provide a hint as to whether or not they’ll be a productive employee.

But any kind of pre employment assessment has the potential to favor one group of people over another during the recruitment and selection process. It’s important to keep this in mind when deciding what kind of testing to administer and how to go about doing it.

The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has created a factsheet to help employers avoid any unnecessary pitfalls related to administering pre employment testing or screening. The factsheet includes best practices regarding the implementation of pre employment testing. One practice is to administer tests without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, or disability.

Another best practice is, in the case that a test screens out a protected group, to determine whether or not an alternative assessment of equal quality has less adverse effects and then adopt that test.

The bottom line is that the recruitment and selection process needs to be fair and transparent. A pre employment assessment can give employers valuable information but make sure that it’s not at the expense of any group of people.

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