JobSync Roundtable: Navigating the 2026 OFCCP Regulatory "Seismic Shift"

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Navigating the 2026 OFCCP regulatory seismic shift, the jobs in ground table is next on the

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Okay, Rectake is the landscape for federal contractors has changed overnight with the

revocation of executive order on one, two, four, six, the restructuring of the OACCP and the finalized

2026 federal budget, the old way of managing affirmative action is obsolete.

Use your organization pair for the new enforcement era. Well, in this episode, you're going to

hear a climate law attorney and consultant as well talk about what you need to know about the

changes coming to OACCP in 2026. Enjoy the audio. You guys are really excited to talk about my

favorite topic, compliance. I feel like the rest of the world does not have the same level of

enthusiasm for it that I do, but we'll try. We'll try. We're going to do our best to get everybody

excited about some things that we're going to chat with. Today specifically, we're going to focus

a bit on the federal compliance, our friends in the US government, the OACCP, and I've heads and

some of the changes that are going to impact hiring have impact are going to may not. We'll see

it's going to be a bit of an adventure today. All right, Chris, are you ready to kick off?

All right, welcome everybody to the JobSync Roundtable for March 2026. Today is about navigating

the 2026 OACCP Raelatory seismic shift. I'll be your moderator for today. I'm joined by

JobSync CEO Leah Daniels, of course. Alex Murphy should be joining us as well.

We have Julie Callie here. She's our new CMO as well. Just a reminder, we'll post the replay

of the webinar to YouTube by tomorrow. I'll throw a link in the chat as well in a second.

Your mics are hot, so hit that mute button if you don't want to talk. Please participate as well.

We definitely want the engagement and use the chat to ask your questions and I'll pass them on.

Our guests today are Sheila Abroad from law firm Fisher Phillips and Amanda Bowman from DCI

Consulting. Let's welcome them and have them introduce themselves to the audience. Tell us a bit

about what they do as well. Sheila, why don't you go first? Yeah, absolutely. Good morning,

good afternoon, or good evening to follow the great intro or welcome that we have.

My name is Sheila Abrin. I'm a partner at the employment law firm of Fisher Phillips.

I sit in our Columbia, South Carolina office, but I help clients all over the country and the

world, frankly, with their federal contractor compliance. I chair our government contract

compliance and reporting practice group. So really excited to be here and excited to chat with

you. Have been doing work in this space and the tangential kind of tendrils that go off

from this as well as traditional employment law. I'm pretty much my whole career. So really

excited to be here. Yeah, thank you so much. My name is Amanda Bowman and I'm a principal consultant

with DCI Consulting Group. We are in HR Risk Management Consulting firm. We offer lots of

different services, but all of them are kind of really advancing our mission of advancing

non-discrimination and fairness in the workplace. One of our big kind of areas of work is in

compliance, specifically EEO and OFCCP compliance. So I've been with DCI about 15 years and supported

lots of federal contractors and subcontractors through OFCCP audits, doing also proactive work,

monitoring the regulatory environment, doing pay equity analyses, all of that related EEO work.

So I'm really excited to join the conversation and get to know you all.

Awesome. Thanks, Sheila. Thanks, Amanda. I'm really excited to have you guys join us.

As Chris mentioned, I lead our commercial efforts here at JobSync and from our perspective,

you know, we worked with large numbers of very large organizations here in the US and globally.

And we do a lot with the application process and how do we make that more efficient? How do we

make recruitment marketing more efficient? That has led us to have lots and lots of conversations

around proper ways to capture, display, question for EEO and OFCCP to ensure that as an employer,

you are staying compliant as well as efficient with your time and your energy with your companies.

I'm going to ask everybody who isn't speaking. If you don't mind, just push stuff on mute. That'd be great.

And we're going to jump right into this. So let's start with, there's been kind of a year.

The last 12 months, a little bit longer than that, have been rocky and interesting in the world of OFCCP

and federal compliance. So Amanda, I think you're going to start and give the audience a little bit

of an understanding of what has changed so we can set the groundwork on where we're headed.

We might need more than an hour to tackle that topic. I'll just kind of start high level,

because again, we don't want to assume everyone is intimately familiar with the Office of

Federal Contract Compliance Programs. So they are in agency within the Department of Labor. They

were formed in the 60s shortly after Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order, executive order

one, one, two, four, six, which I think we can get into and talk more about as well. But really,

they engaged in what I would call, as proactive enforcement. They engage in audits. So they're

a little bit different. You might be familiar with EEOC, right? Or DOJ, we might mention those

investigatory agencies at some point today. But OFCCP really did administratively neutral

proactive audits of the contractor space for various EEO and affirmative action regulatory

requirements that you kind of sign on to when you become a federal contractor or subcontractor.

The last year and some change has been quite interesting. January 21st,

there was January 21st, 2025. There is a new executive order, executive order one, four,

one, seven, three. I'm sure Sheila and I will reference back to that a few times. One, four,

one, seven, three. You don't have to memorize that if you don't already know it. A big thing coming

out of that executive order, though, is it revoked executive order one, one, two, four, six that I

mentioned was passed back in the 60s. And what executive order one, one, two, four, six was,

was your affirmative action and non-discrimination obligations really as far as data is concerned

on the basis of race, ethnicity and sex. And so those requirements were put into place because

of an executive order one, one, two, four, six. So as easily as you can issue that, you can easily

take that away. So with the stroke of a pen with executive order one, four, one, seven, three,

early last year, one, one, two, four, six was gone. Affirmative action, non-discrimination

obligations as far as being a federal contractor is concerned, those regulatory requirements were

gone. Now there's other, again, federal non-discrimination laws that are still in place, right?

Title seven of the Civil Rights Act, hopefully everyone is at least a little bit familiar with

that, that is still in place, but huge change to the regulatory environment for federal contractors

is that one, one, two, four, six was pulled back your obligations to be creating very specific

reports and engaging in very specific actions were pulled back. Now there are still affirmative

action and non-discrimination obligations in place for federal contractors, but only for two very

specific protected characteristics, individuals with disabilities and protected veterans. Those

are both based upon statutory requirements or Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and the

Vietnam era veteran readjustment assistance act or we'll save that from from this point forward

in Section 503. Those are still in place, still require affirmative action, passing that net rider

right, expanding your your pool, your outreach, measuring the effectiveness of that as well as

non-discrimination obligations, those are in place. So I know I just rattled off a lot of things.

We're going to need a flow chart. We're going to need a flow chart.

We're doing this as a round table. We actually need some visuals. We need some slides here.

I think there's some things here, right? Let's bucket it. There are laws and there are executive

orders and an executive order can come and it can go with the stroke of hand, as you just said,

but the laws cannot, right? Those are much more robust, they require a process, they

require lots of votes on the on the Congress floor and so forth. So the net out of where we stand

today is what? Like where are we today with regards to OFCCP? So with OFCCP, your compliance

requirements are affirmative action, non-discrimination for individuals with disabilities and protected

veterans. You have certain policies you need to have in place, certain procedures you need to

engage in certain actions. Some folks might online right be listing their jobs with the

state employment office where that job is being posted for, right? Those obligations, your tagline,

making someone available to talk to about accommodations for the application process or

employment process, things like that. Those are still in place as well as collecting information

on self-id for disability status, veteran status, pre-offer, as well as post-offer, day one

paperwork is fine, and doing certain analyses on those data points. Sheila, do you want to lean in a

little bit around the intent of these rules and laws versus the reality and the practical

of what's happening now? And it has happened in the last call it. Oh my goodness, was it 60 years

that Lyndon Johnson wrote the original? Oh, she was the 60th anniversary. I matched that really fast.

I was like, which is awesome. Yeah.

Can we look at Sheila? She'll live for a second. She's not going to answer that right now.

I mean, I am sorry, I'm having some technical issues. So yeah, absolutely. So a couple of

different things, right? So when we talk about the intent of those laws, part of the reason that

they were implemented is the government was seen as one of the leaders in the employment space

in terms of anti-discrimination, meaning if the government's going to be leading this direction,

they're going to kind of be the ones that are the sounding board for this. Additionally, because

the government contracts with a lot of businesses, the government says, well, you can't use our money

to discriminate against individuals. Like that's the kind of basis around that. And so the

object of affirmative action kind of mixed in with what was happening with the civil rights laws,

created this environment around a kind of framework for federal contractors to evaluate whether

they are providing equal employment opportunities. Now, I will say somewhere in the mix with a lot

of case law, a lot of differences in the language, a lot of the ways that people were implementing it,

there was a perception that affirmative action meant we are giving people jobs or we are setting

aside roles for individuals because they are insert one of those protected characteristics. And

that's never been the goal or intent. And in fact, that is in fact illegal and hasn't been illegal

for a really, really long time. But when you think about the perception for affirmative action,

that is what has kind of been in the underbelly, if you will, of the perception. But really,

that framework, that Amanda described was a system for federal contractors to really evaluate,

are you providing equal opportunities when you were looking at your data? Have you identified barriers

to getting certain types of individuals in your workplace? Have you really reached out everywhere

and done that outreach to make sure the job is available, right? We're not just having a job that,

hey, Amanda, I heard we're hiring down here. If you just go ahead and put in your application

and tell them I sent you, you can get a job, right? That's not equal opportunity because everybody

on this call did not get the opportunity to apply for that role, right? So that's why we have

things like you got to post the jobs everywhere. You got to tell people that we're equal opportunity.

I'm going to say, hey, Amanda, they like everybody here. So please come and work for us. It's not just

fill in the blank. So that's the intent behind the rules and regulations that were in that space,

but then I talked about that underbelly, right? So then we fast forward to a lot of the sentiment

that we were seeing in the first Trump administration carried through the Biden administration,

and then really kind of finer point effectuated in the first days of the second Trump administration

was a removal of executive order 11246. And that's part of the administration's broader focus on

their characterization of returning things to merit-based principles and not focusing on any type of

things that are going to bring about a discussion or consideration of race or gender in particular

for the administration, but that has really been kind of the focus and some of the communication

around that, which is very much different, in my view, from the intent of the way executive order

11246 was effectuated, and the way in which most of the federal contractor community, I would say

99.99% was looking at that in terms of how they were applying and taking seriously their

compliance obligations with regard to anti-discrimination. So the impact of all of this is that our

friends in the OFCCP office have now been significantly impacted as a group, right? This is

a non-trivial downsizing of the humans that do the work in the OFCCP office. So what does that mean

now for companies who are still federal contractors, who are still held to the law of OFCCP, even if

the executive order had been rescinded or revoked? What's the right word? It was rescinded or

revoked honestly. Yeah, all of the awards, it was removed, it's gone either way. Yeah, Bivini Bobbini gone.

I did a lot of research into that. Like some executive orders say like we're revoking this and

others say we're, you know, we're sending this. So I didn't get a clear answer on that.

So I go ahead, Sheila. I think it's at the source. Yeah.

So I will tell you one of the ways that Amanda praised her comments about OFCCP was really

integral to this point of them being a proactive audit organization. So with that came a

bevy of investigators that were organized into regions across the country. They had a neutral

scheduling methodology for identifying contractors for audit. And those regulatory aspects of

executive order one, one, two, four, six were the aspects of the audit that had the most teeth.

If you will, that's where you stood to have as a contractor potential financial liability

and some other consequences. But of course, from a business perspective, you might be looking at

what's the bottom line? What's the money piece here? And so OFCCP shrunk its workforce by 90%.

So that is a significant thing. They went from 54 regional offices to three. So when you think about

that scope and that manpower, that has gone significantly down. We've also seen commentary

from the Department of Labor of wanting to completely remove OFCCP as an agency. I will say

that's not new. That happened during the first Trump administration during budget discussions.

But we've seen OFCCP be funded through that time. But despite its smaller size, the

communication we've gotten out of OFCCP is a...

Frozen is the best time. It's the best time. We're going to find out they're all waiting with

their breath when she looks at that. I don't know exactly what Sheila was going to say, but I can

kind of add to what she was saying is we are really waiting. We have heard little from OFCCP.

They have been abnormally quiet. The director, who is politically appointed,

has made... Nope. She was politically appointed back in September. And she has made no formal

announcements, no formal communications. Things have been really quiet. There was a leaked

internal email recently that talked about some restructuring that was going to happen with

the smaller workforce. But otherwise, there's been very little coming out of it. One thing we do

know under this current administration, though, is things here to be pretty coordinated across

various departments and agencies. So we can expect OFCCP to be behind the scenes really

coordinating with EEOC, with DOJ, and they have been quite active and locked up with with each

other. Now, what's to come, though, with, I think, in enforcement? We were starting to go down

that path. A couple of things would need to... We expect OFCCP to become active, and it would

be whove themselves, to become active with enforcement as quickly as possible, because

how can they defend the funds that they are receiving if they're not producing some type of

product, so to speak, or some type of actions. And so one thing that would need to happen really

for them to resume the enforcement that they typically did, which was scheduling those

proactive, you know, so to speak audits, is they need to revise their scheduling letter. So this

is the letter that would... A form letter that would go to any company, any federal contractor

being audited saying, you need to submit these particular items. That request needs to be approved.

You need to go through a certain approval, public comment process, right? Any government data collection,

right? You kind of need to get that eventually approved by the Office of Management and Budget.

The current scheduling letter doesn't make sense. It's asking for all of these items that were

required under Executive Order 1, 1, 2, 4, 6. That is now gone. So they need to clean up that

letter at the very least, and then really hit the ground running. So this year has been a lot of

wait and see, you know, of like any minute now, like the thing that we're worried about is going

to happen. And I think some of the the Executive Order that rescinded 1, 1, 2, 4, 6,

think some of the outcome of that was like confusion for contractors and companies,

a chilling effect a little bit, like wanting companies to pull back maybe on like legally

compliant, you know, within the law, actions, EEO affirmative. If you want to call it to EI,

whatever those actions are kind of creating this chilling. So I think that's some of the,

unfortunately, underlying purpose of what's happening right now, but I would expect enforcement

at some point to resume. And again, it would be who the agency to do that sooner rather than later.

Sheila, I think you're back. I wasn't able to complete your sentence, but hopefully I

added to to what you were saying. Good. I am back. And I'm sorry about the technical issues. I

have switched devices. So hopefully that is going to fix any issues that I have. No worries.

I will say from an enforcement standpoint. To your to your last point, Amanda, I have seen

personally, I have clients that are having active investigations from OFCCP. So the other are,

yeah, complaints. The other arm that OFCCP has and forgive me if Amanda said that is in addition

to the proactive audit employers much, excuse me, employees much like what the EEOC could file

charges of discrimination with OFCCP related to any of the sources of authority, whether it was

the executive order one, one, two, four, six, Vevera section five, three. And OFCCP would investigate

them. And I have been actively working through some complaints that have been raised through the

agency. So they are still working, you know, kind of in some capacity. And then the other thing,

I will note about that this particular aspect of the agency kind of enforcement is during the

first Trump administration on the director of OFCCP at the time rolled out a really extensive

audit framework for veterans and individuals with disabilities. And so OFCCP, if they choose to

have a really strong framework already for a more aggressive type of audit for your Vevera

in section 503 areas. I'm previously, like I said, a lot of 11246 did the heavy lifting in terms

of what that audit looked like and the focus, but they do have a framework if they want it to get

more aggressive in that particular space. I have a question for I'm not sure which one of you,

but there's a look back period right in an audit. Is it short or medium or long or depends?

Yeah, depends. I can jump in. I'll jump in. Yeah. So for, you know, if we went back, you know,

in the prior days, the scheduling letter would request if you were in the first six months of your

plan year. So when you develop an affirmative action plan, which it's really an affirmative action

and non-discrimination or EU plan, right? Because it's not all about, there's two pieces to it,

but anyhow, when you develop a plan, you pick a point in time and those are your employees that

you do employee analyses on. And then you go backwards a year to look at hiring, promotions,

terminations, you also have compensation decisions. And so let's say your point in time for your

affirmative action plan is January 1, which a lot of clients, for me, I know, do that because

calendar year just makes sense. If you were in the first six months of your plan year,

so if you got your audit letter right now, right, in March, what you would submit is your January

2026 AAP, which would be giving the government information about employees that have put, you know,

as of December 31st or January 1, and then backwards a year. Now, if you were to receive that audit

letter in July, you would have to submit six months of additional information or supplementary

information, or if you received it in October, it would still be six months of, you know,

it's just that six month period. So it depends when you get the letter. If you were to submit a year's

worth of employment decisions, so to speak, or 18 months, but it's not more than that

unless you get into a situation during the audit and they might request more information. You

might have a reason to push back. You might not. It depends. I've seen different things,

putting pun, you know, which administration we're talking about. But yeah, I'm asking a little

bit because as this is all happening, you're seeing employers grapple with the what data do I collect

when? And there's, and there's a real valid question. We were talking before we jumped on about

candidate perceptions of these questionnaires and the fact that they are part of an employment

application and there are studies that suggest that candidates believe that this data could be

used against them. There is systems in place in some organizations to make sure that doesn't happen,

but there are also many companies in which those systems don't exist. And while maybe they don't

happen, or they do happen, they should, they could happen. And so, you know, employers are grappling

with the fact that candidates don't really like filling out the EEO and the OCCP forms every single

time they apply to a job. And can they move that? Can they, can they limit that requirement?

If they're not going to get under Senate reporting, because they're not going to be audited,

doesn't matter anymore. Or what we're seeing is more companies going, I'm touching nothing.

Leave it all alone. Just keep asking the questions. We're going to worry about this on another day.

Where are you all with that?

So I will, I want to note two things. So one part of the application, I want to just make a

a bright line distinction that while it may be part of the application process, it should not be

part of your application. So any of those questions, so maybe it's part of the candidates first

experience when they come to your organization, but it should not be part of the application.

And you are rightly, it does lead to some candidate concern about the use of information.

And the regs and guidance and legal perception and guidance in this area has always been

that information needs to be kept separately from the other pieces of data that you have that

you're collecting from a candidate. Decision makers should not have access to the information.

It should be kind of quarantined off, you know, oftentimes when I'm talking to clients about

their voluntary self ID process or what they're doing or how they're doing their periodic checks,

like who's got access to it? When it comes in, who are the people that can pull it?

All of those things you want to be auditing and doing those particular things in that respect.

About what do you still do now? That comes to different questions about what your organization

thinks about from a compliance standpoint and from a risk mitigation standpoint, right?

There are, I will go back to buckets. I think someone was talking about buckets earlier, right?

So we'll look at buckets of people who are just like, I want to just comply with the executive,

I mean, with the laws that are still remaining. So section 503 in February, that's all I'm doing,

right? Well, you still have to ask on a pre-offer stage those things currently as the regs are staying

right now. Some people are saying I want to keep it the same. Now, I will tell you from a risk

mitigation standpoint, I am in a camp of are we still doing privileged analyses of that work?

And the reason of those employment transactions that Amanda was talking about and the reason for

that is along with the focus in this area, we're also seeing a focus from the EEC or the DOJ

around misopportunities for different demographics of individuals. And if you are not tracking that

information, how are you able to defend against claims if that comes in? If someone comes in and they

say, Hey, you did not hire me because I am insert whatever demographic. If you've not been tracking

that information, how are you going to know whether that was an issue or not? And that's one of

the reasons why I have long since said that federal contractors have a leg up over private employers

because they're actually looking at this data, making sure that there aren't barriers to

employment in that regard. But I will say again, that's a decision point, right? Because you don't have

to just you don't have to ask applicants race and gender information. Now, what I will say is you

do still have obligations to ask your employees that information because EEO1 reports are still a

thing. They are still a thing. And if you happen to be in a lovely state where there are other EEO

or pay data reporting, looking at you, California, looking at you, Massachusetts, looking at you,

anymore Illinois, right? You still have to collect that data because you still have state law

requirements for that. So I don't think this is a we're just going to throw what's the phrase,

throw the baby out with the bathwater. I've never understood that. But I definitely don't think this

is a situation where we're making that decision. We have to be nuanced and thoughtful about

understanding the why we were collecting it, understanding do we want to continue collecting it?

And if so, how we're going to use that data and be understanding other reasons and methodologies

we might have for that. Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing. And if you want to think that you

okay, I'm doing the risk analysis, maybe I'll stop collecting, you know, race and gender

sex information. I just want to add the point of the absence of information doesn't necessarily

help you. The agencies will do something called an adverse inference analysis, meaning they will

create a theoretical pool. They'll say, oh, based upon where you're doing your recruiting,

we would expect this many females to have applied, this many males to have applied and like essentially

recreate the analysis. So I'll just put that out there that the absence of information doesn't

necessarily. It should be a very nuanced decision as Shiloh was mentioning. Okay, we can move on.

This feels like those synthetic users that can apply to your surveys now.

I hear so much about that from clients now. So much. Yeah. Yeah. We're all going back to paper and

pencil, tear off sheets. Congratulations. You need to walk into apply. Yeah. So there's there's

a user's to make a question before, you know, when we we announce this and I want to make sure I say

this correctly. Do you know anything about the new EEO reporting? And I see somebody added an FOIA,

which I don't know what that is. So we're going to need to see what that is being made available

to the public in February of this year. Yes. I don't know what I just asked you. No, we know. Amanda and I

talk to me fully now. I'll take this one. Okay. So to start to talk about what happened in February,

we got to go back a few years, but I'll give you the high level view of this. Remember I told you

you have EEO one reports that you have to submit that says that your workforce aggregated over

a period of time and Q and Q four of a year. This is what they look like from a race and gender

standpoint in in aggregated form under EEOC requirements 50 employer private employers with 100

and more employees have to submit this. Federal contractors with 50 or more employees have to do

this. The regs say for the EEOC, this information cannot be subject to FOIA, which is the Freedom

of Information Act. There was no such particular carve out for OFCCP's use of your EEO one data,

which they have had. And so several years ago, OFCCP received a FOIA request from a reporter asking

for the EEO one information for all federal contractors for a specific period of time. OFCCP

challenged that ruling and over time, they started asking contractors to submit objections to FOIA

requests. They also had a second request that happened in 2022 for 2021 data. That one is still

pending, but the net of net is that the original request, the ninth circuit, which covers California,

that fun area over there. The ninth circuit said OFCCP, you put out 10 contractors who you

called your exemplar bell weather ones around one particular FOIA exemption exemption for saying

this information should not be produced because it is commercial in nature. There are several

reasons why the federal government can refuse to provide publicly available information to companies.

OFCCP was highly focused on your EEO one reports being four. Those are the objections. In any event,

the ninth circuit said, yeah, no, we don't agree here. And you need to release them. And so what

happened in February of this year was that OFCCP released the EEO one data of all of the federal

contractors for the particular time period. That was requested. You could go to their FOIA reading room

right now and see it. Now I will say it is not in a greatly excessively accessible data set to

look at. I know what it looks like because I deal with that data all the time. Amanda knows what it

means, but your random general person in the population may not necessarily know what it means.

But that was a huge, huge piece of litigation, a huge piece of consternation from some federal

contractors. There were some employers who were like, we post this stuff all the time. We don't care.

But a lot of people were worried about this. So that is what that was. It was not a new EEO one form.

It was EEO one data that was submitted at this point about 10 years ago. So decades old EEO one data

that was produced not a new form, not a new thing, just a new court ruling, if you will.

So when I follow this to the net out on this is your reporting that you submit to the government

is possible for it to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. And therefore at some point in

time, because it suffocates forever, maybe available. So let me put a finer, finer point on that,

because we've talked about a lot of different things, especially because with audits, we submit

information from an audit perspective. This is only related to EEO one reports. But in general,

separate and apart from that, the federal government, we have the Freedom of Information Act to

allow information to be available to the public. But this doesn't mean that everything you've submitted

to OFCCP or could be submitted to OFCCP could be released. This was specifically related to

federal contractors, EEO one reports. A lot. So a lot going on for everything being revoked.

It feels like there's a lot going on. So I'm here. It's actually ties into another great question.

What specific documentation does a federal contractor now need to provide?

In particular, around their AI sourcing and screening tools that isn't going to create disparate

impact under the new 2026 standards. We're going to walk into AI now, guys. So for everyone who is

paying attention, AI is creating a lot of concernation for companies around where and when can you use

it and not only when and where and how and what this transparent use of AI mean and disclosures,

but also there's this pending lawsuit for those who aren't paying attention or in California

around eightfold and is the use of third-party data, which may or may not apply to AI language models,

the large language models. Will that also be subject to fair credit reporting? Therefore,

you have to be able to allow disputes. It's messy. This AI thing is messy. So as we're looking at it

right now, and I don't know, Sheila, if you want to jump in this, or Amanda, you have a perspective,

but what do the what do federal contractors in particular need to be thinking about in the use

of AI in their recruiting and application processes? Yeah, I can all start to tackle it and then

Sheila definitely jump in. Again, I would say we need probably the full hour or more to fully

tackle potentially what this question is asking. I'd say it depends. Are we talking about

an AI tool that is being used for recruiting purposes? Is it starting to blur the line between

recruiting and selection? Is it a tool that's formally a part of your selection process? Is it

beyond that? What you should be doing, I think, our advice, or what the things you should think

about would change depending upon how you're using it. It's also going to depend maybe what state

you're in as well. But if we're thinking from a federal requirements perspective, and specifically

for federal contractors, I'd say there is no rule. There is no 2026 standard. There's lots of

executive orders that are coming out lately. But if you really look at them, they're all really about

opening the door to AI. The latest announcements coming out, I think this week are about educating

Americans on what AI is and encouraging use. AI dominance. Yeah, AI dominance, things like that.

The Department of Labor is launching this education initiative where you can get daily text messages

that educate you on AI and give you little questions. I was like, I'm not signing up for that.

I get enough spam text. I don't need to add daily Department of Labor AI text to my list.

But so point is there's lots of AI out there. But I don't, there really isn't enough out there that

I think squarely getting at this question. And so I think what I would say, and what she'll

would say too is, unfortunately, it's kind of what we were talking about before with just analyses

in general. Like the law hasn't changed. Title seven of the Civil Rights Act continues to exist.

Using protected characteristics in your decision making continues to be illegal. Doesn't matter

if you're using non-human tools to do that, right? And so how you have to think about, okay, well,

how can I prove that I am not discriminating, right? And so there's something called the uniform

guidelines on employee selection procedures. Or you guess, we'll probably say from this point forward.

If you're not familiar with that, I'd become familiar with it. It was written back in the 70s.

So it does not talk about the internet or even get close to AI, right? However, you can still apply

its principles forward. And what it says essentially is, you know, if there is an overall disparity,

you know, when you look at your hiring numbers, what you need to do is a components analysis or

steps analysis. You need to break down your selection process into individual steps. That includes AI.

So you need to be analyzing that point in which AI is ranking, scoring, deciding who the

recruiter is going to look at versus not who the manager is going to look at. Whatever it might be,

like the later in the process, I'd say probably the riskier gets, right? If you're using AI to decide

who gets interviewed or who gets the job, that's even riskier probably than earlier in the process.

But nothing is free of risk. And then you have to say, well, our algorithm is continuously

changing, or my vendor won't tell me what is being used, et cetera. And so when you think about

that, I think some guiding principles are one, make sure you do an inventory. What AI is even

existing and that, if you go back to, you know, when OFCCB was operating in full force with 11246,

they were asking in their scheduling letter, it wasn't even AI necessarily. It was anything that's

using an algorithm or language models, right? So it was automated processes. We were like

automated process. Is that like an Excel macro? What exactly do they mean by that? And they chose

not to define it. But anyhow, so the point is just think about, can I isolate what tool is being

used, when it's being used, what decision it's making, pass, fail, top 10, sort, whatever is

happening. Can I even figure that out? And then can I, can I identify what characteristics or

factors or key words it is using to make those decisions? That's hard enough itself. The algorithm's

always changing. So those are the things, the type of things you need to be able to document or

work with your vendor to make sure that those things are documented. And then you need to routinely

be monitoring those things, because although there's not a federal law, there is again still active

enforcement under EEOC, under DOJ, not necessarily OFCCP in the world we are today, but that I think

could come down the line. But again, I rattled off a lot, Sheila, what would you add to that,

No, the one thing I'll echo the, yes, please, how you reference you guys is that when the EEOC

under the Biden administration, with generative AI first got on the scene and they started talking

about, okay, what are we going to use? What's the framework? What's the guys to ensure? There's no

discrimination. They referred right back to that document. So they went back to something that has

been in place. Again, several decades today, you know, the foundational things are still there.

You still have to ensure that there aren't barriers to employment in these particular areas. And

the other aspect that I will add about AI is we're often talking about it, like how is it selecting,

how we're doing that. And those things are critically important from a discrimination standpoint.

But I don't want it to get lost in the shuffle that the other discriminatory aspect that sometimes

can come from AI, especially in the hiring contacts from the selection contest as it relates

to disability and access. So you really have to be thinking about the full force of anti-discrimination

categories that we're looking at when you're thinking about AI. And again, you know, as I mean,

I mentioned, OFCCP asking for that information, was there again federal contractors having a leg

up on the private sector of how to do the due diligence of looking into their select procedures

or tools to seeing what it is that we're doing. How is it making those decisions? Because it really

does cover the water. And it's not just some of the like newer cooler AI things that have come out.

There are a lot of things that have been in kind of civil procedures within tools that

companies have been using that are using artificial intelligence or different algorithmic decision

making, sorting candidates. If you have a system that's rank all your candidates, this is like

a best match for you. And you've had that built in for a really long time. Guess what? That's an

algorithmic decision that it's making. If you have tests that are looking at different things,

if you're doing different interviews and interviews, like there's so much that goes into it. And while

it's cool and shiny, it is something that you should be evaluating. And then the final thing I'll

say on this from a risk perspective is that whenever you are looking at any type of assessment tool,

which is also the way that the enforcement is likely in this area, you have to look at it as to

how it's applicable to your specific workplace. Oftentimes, when you have other assessments,

they'll say, we have done the testing. We know that it's safe. It's not discriminating against. We

can give you all of this paperwork to show you that it's not discriminatory that we've done all

this proprietary testing that you can't see anymore underlying information on, but just trust us.

We've done it. That's really not the standard when you're evaluating AI tools. You have to see

how does it work on our specific selection process? How are we ensuring that when we apply it to

what we are doing as an organization, as a company culture, as a what have you that it's not having

any discriminatory impacts? So if I were to sort of compartmentalize this a bit for operational

utilization of it, one, if you're not collecting the EEO or CCP data at the beginning, you actually

can't do what Amanda was suggesting, which is break down the component parts to understand. So

you have to be collecting that data one way or another in order to be able to do the analysis.

I think that's a I think we all agree that that is a please don't get rid of your forms today.

You should collect it for lots of good reasons. That should be an active decision right that you

are including counsel and talent in HR like it should be a multi group kind of decision to say

what point in the process are like are we collecting it and when and how does this impact risk

assessments? Yeah. And can I add a practical point to that too? Yeah. Is also thinking about internally

what systems would have to go away or would need to be put back online if something about this

changes in the future? And so one of the things that I see with a lot of clients is that from a

compliance standpoint, they have built a machine and it is a well oiled great machine and it

took a lot of blood sweat and tears and payroll to build that machine and should that machine need

to start running again in two years, three years or what have you. What are you going to need to do

that to build that machine again? So that's a practical aspect too to think about to you.

That's a good point. And then when you're thinking about adding AI and we are hearing

from companies in particular, can I screen and rank using AI being the biggest one that

companies are considering in part because of the current economic standards and that we are

getting a far greater number of applicants per job than we've seen in a very long time

with smaller recruiting teams and so forth. I'm curious, I've not seen anyone do this where they

apply an AI screening tool to only some of their jobs. They AB test it, leave the current

piece in place. I've not actually seen this done. Somebody may have an example, I don't know if

anyone's on the call has done it, but it's an interesting thing to think about. Should we be

not rolling this out fully so that we can test and we can make sure that we are confident in

the outcomes? But I think your point earlier, Amanda, is super important, which is the algorithms

change. So there needs to be a plan for a go dark period or some way to measure continuously to

make sure that the algorithm hasn't slipped in one direction or another, that was unexpected

because the slow movement is the hard ones to catch, right? It's easy to see something disappeared

or went offline. It's hard when it moves by a small percentage point every quarter. You

don't necessarily notice it until much later in time. Amanda, you had, we were talking originally,

you had some really exciting updates around something called iPets and I want to just

lead in with, do you want to give everyone a little bit of understanding of what that is and why

this is interesting? Yeah, I just kind of wrote up because it's something we're following right now

and it's less about employees at the moment and actually more about an expanded scope around.

College and University, so four-year college and universities, and there are applicant

pools for students. So there's something that happens on an annual basis at different

points during the year that's been happening for a very long time called the integrated post-secondary

education data system data collection or iPads data collection. So it collects various things

from colleges and universities, you know, the government is collecting this and it collects

some workforce data but also information at a very high level about students and so actually

colleges and universities typically don't submit an EEO1 report that we were talking about earlier,

but instead they submit iPads information on, and again, it's very high level workforce data.

So proposed last year and then approved in December and going live deadline today,

which today was even the extended deadline is kind of in addition to that iPads submission,

the the acts or admissions and consumer transparency supplement survey, and the reason why I wanted

to bring it up is so it's submitting like very detailed kind of student level data about

you know, whether or not they were admitted, race, sex, information, financial status,

just various different categories for the last six school years. So this is a massive and

very detailed data collection. And so I mentioned this because again, it was improved. There's

some challenges that we're waiting to hear how the judge rules one way or the other, but I mean,

the deadlines today. So my guess is folks on the line probably have already submitted, but

or waiting to hit the submit, but one of the reasons I also wanted to bring it up even for non

colleges and universities for kind of the other end of the federal contractor pool is,

you know, what this administration does kind of opens the door for the next administration,

right? And maybe the next administration or a future democratic administration comes in,

or even Republicans, depending upon what what the thought is and they say, you know what,

OFCCP or whoever takes off CCP's place if they were to go away, they were, you know,

regularly collecting 12 months of information or 18 months of information. Now this year,

we want six years of information, right? Or we want companies submitting all this data on an

annual basis for their workforce, right? Not not student applicants, but workforce you could

see how they would quickly make that leap. So anyways, so one's to mention that it's just,

it's interesting, whereas, you know, in certain perks of the arena, things are being

hold back and there's a chilling effect on what data you should collect or analyze or require

to do, right? With the rescission or revocation of 11216, but then for colleges and universities,

it's more, more, more, give us more data and there's a gain and more. So it's an interesting,

about all of it is under the sort of, or some of it is under the guise of illegal DEI,

you know, it's kind of faked into a lot of the executive orders that are then leading to these

actions. So I don't think we need necessarily need to talk more about it, but I think it's an

interesting thing, one to be aware of and to see what the domino effect is. I'll just add there

a higher education is getting absolutely rocked. Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry about that. I do a lot of

higher education works, too. It is, it's a, it's a wild time, but that to the point we had earlier

about another reason why you might not want to stop data collection, right? Is because you don't

know, this has been one of the first times from an administration and enforcement standpoint where

the, what you did in the past and whether you thought it was appropriate or not does not seem to

be dispositive or motivating or controlling on what it is that is currently being asked for or

what the current expectation is. And so, you know, one of those phrases, if you kind of stay

ready, you don't have to get ready, right? So thinking through that, that might be another reason

why you want to kind of maintain some of that information and just thinking through, you know,

what happens if an administration comes and asks you for six years' worth of data.

I think it's interesting because the data retention piece has now reached an interesting level where

globally you're starting to see somewhat conflicting perspectives on data retention and storage,

right? Where our friends that are covered under GDPR, it's like, get rid of data as quickly as

you possibly can. You know, Canada has now a law of the Quebec province that is encouraging you

to get rid of data to keep it no longer in three years. So we're starting to see this data retention

component become more and more relevant, but also on the flip side, you're like, I need to keep

this data just in case because I might need to report on it later. You are, we are finding that,

I think companies are struggling with the proper balance of retention versus compliance in terms

of reporting out later. So it's going to be something that I think continues to evolve for

organizations as they struggle with that requirement. Now here in the U.S., you can keep data forever,

I'm pretty sure. So just pre-data everybody. So wrapping up today, you guys first of all,

thank you both so much. Thank you for giving us so much of your time, and thank you so much for

giving of all your information and knowledge. You guys are both amazing. I really do appreciate it.

We are going to be back with everybody. In a month, Chris, can you give us the quick high level?

Yeah, April 22nd, we're talking about the, we're going to rise the trend of a candidate fraud

in the hiring process. So we're going to have on Jason Roberts from CLO staffing,

or up the RPO, CLO, and Andrew Rudompsky from Aspen and Littys talking about that and

talking about whether or not it's a real problem and what we should do about it. So stay tuned for that.

And candidate fraud for those of you paying attention seems to span a large number of things,

things that are actually candidate fraud, things that are just candidates using automation that

feels like fraud, candidates that are using Chatchee BT, rewrite the resume. So we have a big,

big group of data to go jump into. So we're really excited to see you all in about a month.

Otherwise, I would really like to thank everybody for joining us today,

getting so much of your time. Have a wonderful afternoon.

Thank you, everyone. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. Bye now.

Another episode of Rectech is in the books. Be sure to rate a review on iTunes or Spotify.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn or visit RectechMedia.com, or you can find the audio and links

for this show on our blog. RectechMedia's mission is to inform the modern recruiter.

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Thanks for listening and we'll see you soon on the next episode of Rectech,

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