Recruit and Hire

The Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) regulations require Registered Apprenticeship Program sponsors to ensure that their outreach to, and recruitment of, apprentices extends to all persons available for apprenticeship within their recruitment area – without regard to race, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), ethnicity, or disability.  To learn more about this topic, you can watch this training webinar: Effective Outreach and Selection in Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs). This training will review EEO requirements for outreach and recruitment, distinguish between universal and target outreach and recruitment, summarize EEO requirements for apprentice selection, and identify required records for collection maintenance.

• To ensure that outreach and recruitment practices reach all qualified candidates, sponsors must develop and update annually a list of recruitment sources that will generate referrals from all demographic groups. This list must include the contact information for each recruitment source. 
• When sponsors have openings for apprentices, they should reach out to recruitment sources to provide them advance notice – preferably 30 days before the application deadline – so the sources can notify and refer candidates. 
• Apprenticeship opportunity announcements must include the EEO Pledge.

For more information, read the Apprentice Outreach and Recruitment Quick Reference Guide.

For more information about outreach and recruitment of people with disabilities, read the Partnership on Inclusive Apprenticeship’s (PIA) EEO page on Conducting Outreach and Recruitment

Sponsors can use the Universal Outreach Tool to find partner organizations in their area that can help to recruit apprentices. The tool also makes it easy for sponsors to develop the list of recruitment sources required in the EEO regulations.

• Read the Universal Outreach Tool instructions
• Watch the video tutorial

Sponsors may use one or more procedures to select and hire apprentices, as long as those selection procedures are:

• Consistent with federal Employment Tests and Selection Procedures.

• Uniformly and consistently applied to applicants.
• "Facially neutral" in terms of race, color, religion, national origin, sex  (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), sexual orientation, age (40 or older), genetic information, and disability. For example, "must be a high school graduate" is a facially neutral requirement.

• Consistent with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, including the requirement that a selection procedure not have a disparate impact on women or any racial or ethnic group unless:
  • It is related to apprentices' performance in the apprenticeship program;
  • It is consistent with business necessity; and
  • No alternative method is available that has less of a disparate impact and serves the sponsor's needs for selecting apprentices who are likely to be successful in the program.

• Consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), including the requirement that a selection procedure not screen out or tend to screen out individuals with disabilities, on the basis of disability, unless the procedure is shown to be job-related for the position in question and is consistent with business necessity.