Sponsors should make good faith efforts to seek alternative or additional sources that are more effective at referring diverse qualified applicants. The Office of Apprenticeship has provided information and online resources to sponsors regarding recruitment sources. During compliance reviews, sponsors would only be expected to describe their good faith efforts to recruit diverse apprentices.
If the sources that a sponsor is using to meet its outreach and recruitment obligations are not generating referrals from the various demographic groups in the sponsor’s recruitment area, what should the sponsor do?
Equal Employment Opportunity
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No. Sponsors are not permitted to engage in preferential hiring based on race, sex, or any other protected category. Further, nothing in the Equal Employment Opportunity regulations requires sponsors to select unqualified applicants or a less qualified person in preference to a more qualified one. Indeed, doing so on the basis of a protected characteristic like race or sex would be unlawful under the regulations.
Sponsors are required to engage in outreach and recruitment activities designed to reach all demographic groups within the relevant recruitment area and need to ensure that their programs offer equal employment opportunities to all apprentices and applicants. Further, sponsors required to maintain Affirmative Action Plans may need to set race, sex, ethnicity, or disability utilization goals – if they find that their programs underutilize any of these particular groups. However, these goals are not quotas; they do not provide a sponsor with justification to extend a preference to any individual on the basis of a protected characteristic, nor do they permit sponsors to create set-asides for specific underrepresented groups. For example, the regulations make it clear that sponsors should not establish separate ranking lists based on protected characteristics.
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As a general rule, sponsors should engage in broad-based advertising efforts to ensure that their recruitment efforts extend to all persons available for apprenticeship. Sponsors must provide recruitment sources advance notice, preferably 30 days, of apprenticeship openings and must include their equal opportunity pledge in their opportunity announcements.
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Yes. Under 29 C.F.R. 30.10, a sponsor may give priority to qualified workers who have been waiting for openings in the program, as long as that selection procedure is applied uniformly and consistently and complies with the requirements for selection devices under the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures.
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Yes. Background checks are allowed, with a few caveats. First, sponsors should indicate what type of background check they mean (e.g., criminal, credit, etc.) and what they mean by “passing it.” For example, descriptions might include “no felony conviction within the last seven years,” “no drug convictions,” or “no conviction of any kind within the last five years.”
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