Yeah, this recruitment thing he laid out is illegal on several dimensions. 1. employer is obligated to advertise broadly enough to generate a diverse applicant

Yeah, this recruitment thing he laid out is illegal on several dimensions. 1. employer is obligated to advertise broadly enough to generate a diverse applicant pool (for protected classes). 2. personal reference is prohibited along similar lines. IMPORTANT: by the sheer fact of your pool not being diverse, you have liability! does not matter if you treat every protected class applicant really well! The NON-DIVERSE POOL ALONE creates a legal liability. This is also illustrative because VC's often say the'll help company management with operational issues, but because VC's are so sheltered (don't have to hire a lot) they don't know these basic issues. Any company CEO worth his salt is very sensitive to "job applicant pool" issues, and funny that the operations value add from a VC is going to lead some poor CEO into a lawsuit!! some references: http://www.workforce.com/section/news/feature/dipping-carefully-into-applicant-pool/ http://www.workforce.com/section/news/feature/dipping-carefu... http://public.getlegal.com/legal-info-center/hiring-process/employment-screening-and-advertising http://public.getlegal.com/legal-info-center/hiring-process/...