David P Jones, President and CEOIn an interview with Manage HR, Dr. David P. Jones, the President and CEO of HirePayoff, described the company’s employment assessment programs that help organizations make the right hiring decisions. Jones has practiced as an Industrial- Organizational Psychologist and Human Resources Consultant for over 40 years. He also serves as the president of Growth Ventures Inc., a human resources firm working with company start-ups, major growing companies, and units of the government. Jones well-penned his decades of experience in human resources in his book Million-Dollar Hire – Build Your Bottom Line, One Employee at a Time. Through that book, he shows how companies, regardless of their size, can reinvent their hiring processes and add millions to their bottom line profits by finding the best employees defensibly.
Could you give me a brief overview of HirePayoff?
HirePayoff was founded in 2011 with a mission to assist organizations in reinventing their hiring processes online. In effect, we pioneered the development of online candidate screening back in the 1990s. We still work with organizations throughout the U.S. and worldwide to help them find their top talent, and bring productive results specific to their organization’s needs. As a leader in creating recruiting, screening, and hiring solutions for clients, we leverage in-house technology to assist organizations. More importantly, we also provide extensive legal support to our clients for the potential legal issues they might encounter while hiring. Clearly, employers need to meet legal standards if challenged by a government agency, or by candidates in a court. In such scenarios, HirePayoff provides service to companies by designing and administering their candidate hiring programs in a way referred to as “validated.” In addition to creating legally validated employee screening programs, we defend organizations that are challenged, and provide support via deposition and court testimony. When a company hires us, they can access legal support with our suggested lawyers, too, along with the programs we provide.
What are the typical challenges your customers do not need to face while they approach you with a requirement?
Again, many employers face legal challenges when they hire employees. Such legal issues related to hiring can bring high costs, disruptions, and negative exposure to the employer. When we design and implement an employee screening and hiring program, we go through steps that address the potential legal challenges that might be faced. For example, the U.S. Government requires organizations to follow certain guidelines while hiring employees. Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, Executive Order 11246, the Americans with Disability Act, the Equal Pay Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act are some of the standards employers need to address. These legal requirements on hiring employees are shared with organizations by HirePayoff to ensure a fair recruiting and hiring process is applied. When we design and execute hiring programs for our clients, we always adhere to State and Federal laws. Again, in matters associated with legal compliance, we have frequently played the role of an expert witness in the courtroom where organizations are challenged for deviating from statutory requirements. In the courtroom, we either defend the organization's prior hiring processes, or suggest ways to improve them.
The employee screening industry is made up today with many vendors who bring different online screening programs to clients. Employers today need to be cautious about many aspects while they look for an employment screening solution. Vendors today make many claims to sell their products. Still, many such products also come with certain legal risks associated with the employer’s hiring program. Vendor comments such as “trust us, our hiring system works legally” is a buyer beware sales pitch. Many vendors try to convince employers that their product, not validated, was developed in conformity with the State and Federal mandates and can be used as a defense; often is just not true.
Following prior decades of similar, global success by Dr. Jones, HirePayoff was founded in 2011 with a mission to assist organizations even better in reinventing their hiring processes, and gaining success per his Million- Dollar Hire – Build Your Bottom Line One Employee at a Time book topics
Typically, companies approach us for designing their unique screening and hiring programs. Upon engaging with a client, we execute a detailed job analysis of their requirements for the targeted jobs, and how candidates should be screened. That enables us to determine and validate the most effective means to screen employees. Candidate screening procedures can be different, depending upon the organization’s needs. Some clients require online methods to assess candidates, while others require offline methods such as direct walk-ins. If the client wants candidates to walk in directly and attend the screening process, we design and also implement the entire program. We link with our other organization called Data Solutions, International to conduct the employer’s online screening and to collect data from screening candidates. In addition to delivering the results of online assessments, we retain the data gained and perform various analyses to verify their validity and identify even better methods of use ongoing. Fundamentally, we always track “how well the candidate screening process works, and improve it when feasible for every company.”
Could you narrate an instance that highlights the benefits brought by one of your clients after implementing your programs?
As an example, one of the largest global hotel groups approached us for creating an employee screening and hiring program for every hotel job. The client wanted to hire candidates for all the hotel departments, including management, service, sales, food service, and more. HirePayoff designed candidate screening programs for each job role available at the hotel, and we successfully hired the right candidates for all the roles. The client hires over a million candidates every year using HirePayoff’s hiring programs for their hotels and restaurants worldwide. The hotel company’s location-by-location income increased in a major way once the new program was launched to hire millions of employees. In another instance, we assisted a major government client in designing the selection procedures to hire police officers, firefighters, and correctional officers. We helped them develop employee screening and selection procedures for various job requirements.
What differentiates HirePayoff from its competitors?
We strive to bring the best-of-breed and economical candidate screening programs to an organization. We continue to monitor our programs, verify their accuracy, and even improve them when the organization’s job requirements change. More importantly, we write validation study reports that enable organizations to defend themselves in courtrooms. The major difference between HirePayoff and other vendors is that we validate every program we offer according to the U.S. Government's standards. Besides implementing programs, we continuously track our products’ use, and ensure seamless functioning. As a lawyer prepares a client to defend themselves legally, many law firms advise their clients to bring us in as the vendor. In effect, we are involved with organization lawyers almost constantly in creating a company’s new candidate hiring programs. A presentation shown on our HirePayoff website, and available if requested via an email to davejones@hirepayoff.com and labeled Sham… Scam… Khazam! explains how we focus on helping employers compared to most other vendors’ actions displayed in that presentation.
