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Mid/Large companies that manage goal alignment well boast significant productivity and profitability improvements. Download this white paper to find out how to align goals in 10 easy steps. Author Richard Oyen has spent more than 20 years in Performance Management working with companies like Oracle and Walgreens. What you can learn from this white paper:

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Download the free whitepaper here!

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Online training enables you to:

Reduce costs and the need for travel
Improve productivity and morale
Increase learner engagement and access to information

Not all criminal record searches are created equal. Learn how to navigate the criminal system and ensure you are eliminating negligent hiring issues.

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Happy Holidays.

More and more mid-career adults are taking on internships, according to a recent New York Times article.

Why? Mostly, it’s the economy. People are looking for ways to boost their skills and resumes to make themselves more marketable to potential employers.

Other employees cited learning experience as a benefit and accepted internships to help them change careers.

Companies benefit by getting affordable work from experienced professionals.

What do you think? Would your organization hire interns who are in the middle of their careers? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

No surprise here: They want cash.

Though it’s often said younger workers are more interested than their predecessors in factors like flexibility and social responsibility, 85% still say salary is the most important incentive employers can offer, according to a recent survey by Personnel Today.

Of course, that doesn’t mean other benefits don’t matter when you’re recruiting. But companies should be careful about substituting those other perks for competitive compensation, the researchers said.

Here are the 10 most ridiculous lies recruiters have caught, courtesy of a recent CareerBuilder survey:

1. Claiming to be a member of the Kennedy family.
2. Listing a degree from a fake school.
3. Including a photograph — of someone else.
4. Claiming to be a member of Mensa.
5. Listing military experience dating back to before the candidate was born.
6. Claiming (falsely) to have worked for the hiring manager before.
7. Listing “CEO” as a previous job title, when the candidate was actually a lower-level, hourly employee.
8. Submitting samples of work that were actually done by the interviewer.
9. Falsely claiming to be Hispanic.
10. Claiming to be a former pro baseball player.

How about you? Have you ever caught candidates committing bold-faced lies? Let us know by leaving a comment.

To keep employees and customers safe — and avoid “negligent hiring” lawsuits — many companies have policies against hiring convicted criminals for some jobs. But those policies can lead to their own legal problems.

Take an EEOC complaint filed last week against Madison Square Garden. An applicant was offered a job, pending a clean background check. The offer was then rescinded when the company found out she’d been convicted on assault charges five years ago.

The reasoning behind the complaint: Screening out people with criminal records has a bigger effect on minorities, since they’re convicted of crimes at higher rates than whites. That makes it unlawful discrimination, the woman and her attorneys say.

Criminal record checks OK?

Does she have a case? There’s no word from the EEOC yet on whether it’ll take up the case. But the agency had previously come out and said criminal record checks could have an unlawful “disparate impact” on some protected groups.

Last year, the agency issued a set of guidelines on the use of criminal records in hiring. The keys to staying out of trouble: consistency and business necessity.

A blanket policy barring those with criminal records would be illegal bias, according to the EEOC. Employers should take into account:

1. the nature and severity of the conviction
2. the time that has passed since the conviction, and
3. the job the person is seeking.

Also, lawful policies need to be consistently enforced for all positions covered.

In a court case last year, a newly hired employee was let go when his boss found out he’d been convicted for murder several decades before.

The job he wanted? He was applying for a bus driver position, which meant he would have spent most of his time with passengers, away from direct supervision.

The court ruled for the company, saying the policy was necessary for keeping those passengers safe (Cite: El v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transp. Authority).

A recent survey in the United Kingdom asked supervisors how they thought about candidates’ pregnancy during the hiring process. The result: A whopping 76% said they wouldn’t hire someone if they knew she was pregnant or was going to get pregnant within six months of starting the job.

We aren’t sure if a survey of American bosses would yield the same results, but if the EEOC’s statistics are any indication, it’s more important than ever for employers to be careful about the issue. Pregnancy discrimination charges hit a record high in 2007, going up 14% from the year before.

Supervisor training

The key to preventing suits is education. Some things managers need to know when they’re recruiting and interviewing:

• Don’t ask about family status or plans. Questions like those can slip out as benign chit-chat, but they also give unsuccessful candidates damaging evidence if they decide to bring a bias claim forward.
• “Planning to have children” itself isn’t a protected class — but not hiring women who plan on having kids can lead to sex discrimination suits.
• You can use your normal screening procedures to make sure pregnant candidates can perform the essential functions of the job — but you can’t hold them to different standards or use special procedures to determine their ability to work.

For more on pregnancy discrimination, read the EEOC’s fact sheet on the subject here.

1. Quality over quantity — Some firms will try to get a job done quickly by throwing their clients a bunch of resumes and hoping one sticks. Before you decide to work with an agency, have someone walk you through its screening process. That’ll help make sure you’re only given quality candidates, which is what you’d be paying them for.
2. Bad retention rates — It’s important to know how long an agency’s placements tend to stick with their employers for, as well how long clients’ relationships with the agency tend to last. Find that out by asking for references from clients.
3. Inexperience — Make sure the agency has experience working with companies like yours. Many firms are highly specialized, so what works for one company may not work for another. Find a firm that specializes in the type of employee you need and has worked with companies in your industry before.