Not exactly. While the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP) apply to federal employers and private and public employers subject to Title VII (i.e., those with 15 or more employees), they are guidelines—not law. This means should a covered employer find itself in court on a discrimination claim, the court will apply the standards found in the UGESP to determine whether unlawful discrimination has occurred. Therefore, an employer that has followed the guidelines, including applicant tracking and adverse impact testing, will most likely have a strong, albeit not guaranteed, defense.

These guidelines apply only to selection procedures which are used as a basis for making employment decisions. For example, the use of recruiting procedures designed to attract members of a particular race, sex, or ethnic group, which were previously denied employment opportunities or which are currently underutilized, may be necessary to bring an employer into compliance with Federal law, and is frequently an essential element of any effective affirmative action program; but recruitment practices are not considered by these guidelines to be selection procedures. Similarly, these guidelines do not pertain to the question of the lawfulness of a seniority system within the meaning of section 703(h), Executive Order 11246 or other provisions of Federal law or regulation, except to the extent that such systems utilize selection procedures to determine qualifications or abilities to perform the job. Nothing in these guidelines is intended or should be interpreted as discouraging the use of a selection procedure for the purpose of determining qualifications or for the purpose of selection on the basis of relative qualifications, if the selection procedure had been validated in accord with these guidelines for each such purpose for which it is to be used. D.