Free Republic

The online retail giant Amazon.com Inc said on Tuesday that it will stop requiring jobseekers to take a cannabis test in the US, in line with laws in a growing number of states. Amazon will continue to check for other drugs and will keep on screening people for job positions that are regulated by the Department of Transportation, according to the company’s consumer boss Dave Clark. “In the past, like many employers, we’ve disqualified people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for marijuana use,” Clark said. “However, given where state laws are moving across the US, we’ve changed...

Getting a job takes longer than ever, as employers ask more of candidates. It has never been easy to land a job, but a rise in hiring has added a new twist: Employers are taking nearly twice as long to hire people as they did several years ago. Companies need an average of 23 days to screen and hire new employees, up from 13 days in 2010, says Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at the jobs and recruiting site Glassdoor, based on a study of nearly 350,000 interview reviews by the site's users. Applicants run a gantlet of multiple interviews not...

Twenty-seven senators want President Obama to block federal agencies and contractors from asking job applicants about prior criminal convictions. The senators, including 26 Democrats and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), want Obama to take executive action to "ban the box," referring to a question on job applications that asks if an applicant has any convictions. "We ask you to require federal contractors and agencies to refrain from asking job applicants about prior convictions until later in the hiring process," they said in a letter to Obama on Monday. "This policy would eliminate unnecessary barriers to employment for all job...

"An individual applied for a customer-service job, and when asked what he might not like about the job, he said, 'Dealing with people.'" "I had somebody list their prison time as a job. And an exotic dancer who called herself a 'customer service representative.'"