Your company has the right to make the decision that candidates may verbally express interest in an open position. It is not a best practice for the reasons noted below, but there is nothing in OFCCP's Internet Applicant rule or any other part of the federal affirmative action regulations that prevents a company from having candidates make a verbal expression of interest. Among the reasons that allowing a verbal expression of interest is not a best practice are the following: -A verbal expression of interest may violate your standard practice (and perhaps your standard requirement) that in order to receive consideration, a candidate must make written application. Most companies now do, in fact, have such a requirement. By allowing one candidate to receive consideration after violating such a requirement, OFCCP may be suspicious of any requirements you put in place to limit the number of candidates who receive consideration. OFCCP would certainly be suspicious of any attempt by your company to say that candidates must apply through a defined process to receive consideration if you allow undefined exceptions to that process. -A verbal expression of interest will likely require your recruiter to move the candidate's credentials from one requisition to another. We very strongly discourage organizations from having recruiters move a candidate's credentials between requisitions. It muddies the issue of who applied for particular requisitions and it potentially makes large pools of candidates who expressed interest in one requisition into viable candidates for the second requisition. In this situation, there IS an expression of interest, so your company could argue it is valid to move the candidate's credentials between requisitions. However, it may be difficult to PROVE to OFCCP why this particular candidate's credentials were moved unless you have written documentation about the verbal expression of interest. -It's going to be difficult to explain to OFCCP what constitutes an appropriate verbal expression of interest. The situation is easier if a candidate says "I'm glad to be considered for the opening where I formally expressed interest, but I saw a separate requisition and I'd also like to be considered for that." However, what happens with the candidate who says "I'm glad to be considered for this job, and I'd like to be considered for this kind of opening in the future"? What happens with the candidate who says "I'm glad to be considered for this job, and I'd like to be considered for similar jobs in the future?" Your company has the right to define what would constitute an appropriate verbal expression of interest, but it may be difficult to create such a definition. Frankly, it's just simpler to tell the candidate who verbally expressed interest to use your open position to use your regular process to express interest in the second opening. This saves you from the multiple headaches associated with showing that your company (a) allows appropriate verbal expressions of interest from candidates within all protected classifications and (b) clearly defines which candidates properly expressed interest in open positions including the candidates who verbally expressed interest.

You can use this OFCCP audit checklist to ensure you're doing what is required to maintain OFCCP's regulations including VEVRAA, Section 503, and EO 11246. Or request a demo to streamline your compliance and recruiting efforts.