Labor & Employment Law Articles

How To Hire Employees Who Won’t Sue You

As a labor and employment attorneys with over sixty years of experience, our firm has handled a few thousand cases where employees have claimed discrimination based on their age, sex, religion, disability, union activities, sexual orientation, national origin, and every other conceivable basis. In all those cases, we have never met an employee plaintiff who we would to hire or even have a cup of coffee with.

We have found these individuals to be incapable of telling the truth. We have caught them in resumé fraud, forgery, and total fabrications. Employee plaintiffs tend to be marginal performers at best. You will never read a profile of any successful executive in Fortune, Forbes or the Wall Street Journal who was ever a plaintiff in an employment discrimination lawsuit. Basically, employee plaintiffs are individuals who have failed in their prior endeavors, who have excuses for their failures but who are unable to accept any responsibility for their lack of success. They will never admit any mistake on their part.        

There are steps that employers can take to minimize the possibility that they will hire a future employee plaintiff:

• Interview suggestions: See if the applicant is willing to admit past mistakes by asking, “What was your worst mistake?” If the response is, “I can’t think of any mistakes I made,” you don’t have a good candidate for the job. Question the applicant closely about prior positions held and how they came to an end.

• Check references: Many employers believe it is a waste of time to check references from prior employers anticipating they will get only “name, rank and serial number” from them. However, there are strategies for getting real information. Have the applicant sign a release in favor of the prior employers and enclose the release with your request.

• Background investigations: You don’t have to a hire a private detective to get information about an applicant. A lot of information is online. There are web services available that can supply criminal convictions and prior litigation history for a reasonable cost. You can “Google” the applicant and see if they have entries on My Space or Facebook.

• Hire qualified applicants for the job: Hiring an individual who does not have the qualifications for the job is a recipe for disaster. When the unqualified individual is unsuccessful on the job, that individual will be looking for excuses for his failure.

Finally, if you hire someone who is not working out, cut your losses by terminating that employee as soon as possible. Failure to act promptly can lead to a conclusion that the employer condoned poor performance in the past and there may be other (unlawful) motives for the termination.