Hiring at UC Merced too much of a family affair

While top administrators at UC Merced focused on newly issued hiring diktats by the Obama-era Department of Labor to increase diversity, lower-level managers at the newest UC campus were getting increasingly skilled at an age-old corrupt practice that nullifies diversity: nepotism.

The results of an audit process affecting only UC Merced were buried in a webinar and accompanying report late last year. Unlike the fallout from the state’s recent audit showing the office of UC President Janet Napolitano controlled an off-books fund, was paying bloated salaries to top administrators and had interfered with auditors, these findings were buried and received no media attention.

The upshot? There has been more hiring of relatives and spouses at UC Merced than at a New Jersey union hall. As one facilities manager blithely told auditors: “It’s more efficient to just hire people we know.”

Long into the webinar and accompanying report with its oddly upbeat title “Staff Hiring Practices – Working Across Functional Divides to Build Strength and Reduce Risk,” were the findings: From 2014 through 2016, a “significant number” of candidates selected for interview were related to current UC Merced employees. Auditors found relatives and spouses seemed to have an advantage at getting to the interview (and the hired) stage.

The audits revealed sham recruitments in which a hiring process was undertaken when someone known by the hiring manager had already been selected. These so-called “target hires” are a common tell-tale of nepotism and cronyism.

The audits found another troubling telltale: Departments would sometimes interview unqualified candidates while qualified candidates were never contacted.

For any qualified applicant who has ever sent a resume in good faith to UC Merced’s human resources department, the casual comment from another manager will be maddening: “Human Resources involvement in hiring takes more time and we end up with employees who aren’t a ‘good fit.’”

Signs of a problem at UC Merced first came to light in the University of California’s most recent Annual Report on Ethics and Compliance. The report is usually a dry affair, unless you find details about federal billing codes titillating. The report for fiscal year 2015-16, released in September, was no different – with the exception of a couple of sentences nested in a paragraph filled with compliance-speak about an internal audit at UC Merced concerning hiring practices.

Two months after the release of that report, the webinar and accompanying report by three UC Merced administrators popped up on the University of California’s Ethics, Compliance and Audit Services Web site. Buried in that material were the audits’ findings of widespread nepotism at the campus.

Amid the collegiality, insider banter and free-flow of acronym-laced HR-speak were some of the gritty details. Besides revelations of nepotism and sham recruitments, the sampling found:

▪  As many as 75 to 100 candidates would sometimes apply for a position.

▪  Some candidates did not meet the minimum requirements but were interviewed and sometimes hired.

▪  Hiring managers were found to be marking a large portion of candidates as “Not Qualified” after certain number of candidates applied.

▪  A hiring manager had hired a relative and was now supervising the relative.

▪ Human Resources had very little involvement in most recruitments.

▪ Managers never received hiring candidate information from recruiting firms.

A bit of comedy gold can be found in the disconnect between the diversity-crushing practice of nepotism going on at the school and the administrators’ focus on esoteric compliance points related to affirmative action.

This story was originally published May 6, 2017 at 4:35 PM with the headline "Hiring at UC Merced too much of a family affair."