The employment application form is a very important tool for small businesses. Small business owners should never decide a new hire based exclusively on the resume, as more than half of resumes are inaccurate. So before making any hire, they should make the candidates fill in a employment application.

Employment applications or job applications give us additional important information about the candidates such as the reasons why they left a previous job. Therefore, it is important to make a useful employment application form.

Employment applications should avoid certain questions, such as discriminatory questions. All hiring processes must be discrimination free and follow all the federal, state and local employment laws. Companies cannot ask questions about personal characteristics that are protected under the law such as race, age, sex, religion, color, disability…According to many local and state regulations, we can neither ask about criminal convictions on these job applications until there is a real job offer made. And finally, even though it is not prohibited by any federal law, we do not recommend to require the social security number of the candidate in the job applications in order to respect the privacy of the candidate and avoid any threat of identity theft.

On the other hand, a proper employment application should include a section dedicated to education, another one dedicated to job history, another one for designations and another one for references. There also has to be a section where the candidate can specify his/her availability (full-time, part-time,…). If we or a third party we may be using may be doing a background check of the candidate that can be decisive in the hiring process, according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) we must always inform the applicant in the job application that this information can be used to make employment decisions. We should also include an attestation section with a statement that the candidate must sign and where it is stated that all the information provided in the application is true and complete. Besides, it is recommended to include an at-will statement above the area where the candidate must sign where it is specified that both employer and employee can terminate the employment with or without cause at any time, with or without prior notice.