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

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required to track and update candidates' records in NeoGov, specifically interview scheduled and pending job offer. Candidate information should be maintained during each hiring phase to ensure all candidates are considered and afforded the employment opportunity. • Extended continuous recruitment Best practices of other jurisdictions within the State of Hawaii show that open - continuous recruitments are used mostly for "difficult -to -fill" positions. These positions require specialized skills, licenses, or certifications to qualify for the job and may have limited applicants. However, the DHR Director authorized open -competitive recruitments on a continuous basis for not "difficult -to -fill" classes of work for the past three years. These classes of work are based on a minimum qualifications such as a high school diploma and resulted in a large number of applicants (sometimes with up to 1,000 names). The departments could not manage the referred list and were not applying the skill set criteria evaluation uniformly. In addition, continuous recruitments resulted in new candidates being added to the list nonstop, thus, names of preferred candidates could be easily added. In December 2016, the Office of the Mayor instructed DHR to close all continuous recruitments. • Prohibited personnel practices Best practices clearly define prohibited personnel practices such as obstructing a person's right to compete for employment, granting any preference or advantage not authorized by law, or taking or failing to take an applicant for employment based on disclosure of information provided by an applicant. In 2001, the state repealed the statute that defined prohibited personnel practices. Furthermore, the County's current (January 2017) and past hiring procedures, also do not specify specific prohibited personnel hiring practices. Without clear guidance, departments may have an increased risk of not complying with the merit principle. Audit Results 17 1 P a g e