2017-03 Performance Audit Report: County of Hawai'i's Department of Human Resources Hiring Practices

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by the County) located at DHR. This may have been a result of interference by the SRC. The hiring department completed the skill set criteria evaluation, identified applicants to be interviewed, interviewed applicants, ranked applicants based on interview scores and selected the highest applicant. This applicant was put forth to the SRC as the "top scoring applicant best qualified" candidate that was dated and approved by the appointing authority. The SRC did not confirm the name or the department's selection. Subsequently, the department proceeded with second round interviews and a different candidate was indicated on the RTF form. This name was approved by the SRC representative (DHR Director) but the final RTF form did not show the actual results of the first round interviews. The NeoGov system documents did not match the department's file. In January 2017, the SRC was eliminated by the new Office of the Mayor because of the perceived or actual hiring practices that promoted preferential treatment to certain identified applicants. • Insufficient monitoring by DHR The Department of Human Resources did not sufficiently monitor and provide oversight to hiring departments. Without this monitoring, DHR cannot ensure that all County departments are following written policies and procedures which helps ensure compliance with laws, rules, and regulations. The Hawai"i Revised Statute Section 76-5 states that whenever human resource services are delegated or decentralized, the Director shall institute and maintain a system of inspection to determine that the personnel laws and rules were applied and administered by the departments in a manner consistent with the provisions of state law. While DHR provided periodic trainings that covered important aspects of interviewing and selection of candidates, when we reviewed departmental processes, we found various inconsistencies in procedures and questionable practices being performed during their delegated hiring functions. As described above under "What did we find", examples included not using the referred lists of candidates correctly, not reviewing and evaluating all applications for a specific position, and bypassing skill set evaluation, interviews, and employment reference checks. Without a mechanism of periodic inspections and/or audits to review the departmental interview and selection processes, practices that do not conform to personnel laws may not be easily or timely detected. • NeoGov system was not fully utilized NeoGov is an on -demand human resources software used to automate the entire hiring process. Currently, DHR uses NeoGov to manage the recruitment, screening employment applications, establishing eligible lists, sending the referred lists to the departments, and tracking the status of applicants, etc. The Department of Human Resources is not fully using NeoGov's system capabilities to track and monitor the status of candidates during the interviewing and selection processes. Departments were not Audit Results 16 1 P a g e