{"id":31794,"date":"2020-08-19T19:06:40","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T19:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caseyfamilyv2.wpengine.com\/sojourner-hiring-parallels-2\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T15:59:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T15:59:23","slug":"paralelos-de-contratacion-de-sojourner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casey.org\/es\/sojourner-hiring-parallels\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00bfExisten paralelismos entre los procesos de contrataci\u00f3n y de protecci\u00f3n infantil que puedan ayudar a reducir los prejuicios y a reducir el acceso a los servicios de bienestar infantil?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Summary<\/h3>\n

In both hiring and child protection, the process includes similar stages: initial screening, deeper assessment, and confirmation with targeted investment. This brief explores the parallel processes and offers questions for child welfare leaders to consider.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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By Aaron Sojourner, Associate Professor, Department of Work and Organizations, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota<\/p>\n\n\n

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The mission of child welfare agencies is to ensure children are safe with their families. A long practice history and academic literature in child welfare grapples with better and worse ways to do this. This brief examines parallels that exist between organizational strategies for staff hiring and for child welfare decision-making. Why look here? Organizational hiring processes face a structurally similar problem to frontline decision-making in child protection: determining the most productive moments to deploy limited resources and requiring an ensemble of strategies to identify, assess, and act with respect to mission.<\/b> Although the processes are not the same – for instance, hiring processes operate with a high degree of voluntary consent while child protection processes more often involve involuntary, coercive elements – even imperfect analogies can spark new insights.<\/p>\n

A parallel process<\/h2>\n

In both hiring and child protection, the process includes an initial stage with ways to screen a broad range of individuals or their alleged actions. The need for breadth – so as not to miss highest risk cases – necessitates that initial strategies be inexpensive on a per-case basis. The basic goal here is to recognize cases with a high probability of being high-value to advance to a next stage for deeper inquiry, while not advancing cases with a low chance. There will always be errors of both types: missing cases that should advance and advancing ones that shouldn’t. The costs of committing and of avoiding these two types of errors differ.<\/p>\n

Later stages of the process focus investment on gaining a deeper understanding of a narrower set of cases with the goal of determining the most appropriate level and type of resources (time and money) to invest. At each stage of inquiry, the process must balance the cost of processing cases against the beneficial value of information elicited, judged in terms of improving its use of resources towards the overall mission. The table below briefly illustrates a parallel sequence of strategies in hiring and in child protection:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Inexpensive per case<\/span><\/div>\n \n

Screening: Broad and Shallow<\/h2>\n \n \n \n

Hiring<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Recruitment<\/strong>: Identify, engage with, and drive applications from the most promising potential employees and discourage them from the least promising.<\/p>\n

Application<\/strong>: Baseline inquiry to elicit basic info: Should we interview or decline?<\/p>\n

Child protection<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Awareness<\/strong>: Train mandatory reporters, community workers, and public and staff hotlines to stimulate referrals regarding most impactful cases and reduce referrals based on bias or misunderstanding.<\/p>\n

Hotline reports<\/strong>: Initial screening: Should we screen the report in for an investigation or assessment?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Expensive per case<\/span><\/div>\n \n

Assessment: Narrow and Deep<\/h2>\n \n \n \n

Hiring<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Interview<\/strong>: Generate best signals before hire: Should we hire or decline?<\/p>\n

Child protection<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Investigation<\/strong>: Careful, thorough discovery and consideration of family system: Should we offer services? Remove child? Refer for criminal complaint?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Deploy ongoing resources<\/span><\/div>\n \n

Confirmation: Targeted Investment<\/h2>\n \n \n \n

Hiring<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Hire<\/strong>: Negotiate package of compensation and responsibilities.<\/p>\n

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Child protection<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Case planning and management<\/strong>: Offer or require supports and services, child removal and foster care.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Screening<\/h2>\n

In hiring, recruiting is the first stage in the process and aims to generate applications from individuals predicted to be a good fit for the position, while not generating applications from those predicted not to be. Some organizations do barely any recruiting at all. They put a sign in the window or a notice online and wait passively for applications to arrive. Better organizations actively seek out and engage promising talent and encourage their applications. In child protection, hotline reports are analogous to applications: agencies passively wait for allegations of maltreatment, and the response is reactive.<\/p>\n

Mandatory reporting laws are designed to generate referrals from people in the best positions to know; yet most reports to the child protection hotline are not ultimately substantiated, suggesting that the current approach is not effectively identifying those children most at risk of abuse or neglect. Strategic investments in marketing and outreach, training, and technological innovation can promote the effectiveness of these initial intake systems. Reports are signals that contain an unknown combination of truth and noise, including bias. By looking at which sources tend to produce better and worse signals historically, the organization can learn which sources to invest in and which need further improvement.<\/p>\n

Questions for child protection leaders to consider<\/b><\/p>\n