Even the police chief should follow the rules
Poulan, GA is a very small town just to the east of Albany, where the chief of police is in trouble over a background check. The Albany Herald, in a story headlined: “Poulan police chief suspended,” reports the following.
Poulan’s top police official has been suspended after officials say she may have used her power as police chief to snoop on a City Council member. Angie Schlosser has been suspended with pay pending a full investigation into an alleged incident where she ran a background check on Councilman Van Jones, Poulan City Attorney Tommy Coleman said.
I’m sure there are some juicy local political conflicts that play a part in all of this, but there’s also an important point. The point is that background and credit checks are powerful tools to help you hire and promote employees, keep your workforce safe and select tenants wisely, but just like with any powerful tool, you have to use them correctly.
So here are some do’s and don’ts.
Do use criminal background and credit checks as a tool to help you screen out the criminal and the dangerous elements in your applicant pool.
Do use credit checks to cross-verify information and dates on resumes and applications.
Do use all background checking tools in accordance with the law and for legitimate business purposes.
Don’t use these tools for fun, for gossip or for any other purpose that you couldn’t justify to other people in an adversarial setting, like a court.
Are pre-employment credit checks discriminatory?
Sometimes you hear people complain about the use of pre-employment credit checks as part of the hiring process. They say, “My bad credit shouldn’t be an issue in whether I can do the job. I’m being discriminated against.” Are they right?
Kansas City Star business columnist Diane Stafford takes up that issue in her recent column titled: Credit checks a legal part of pre-employment investigations Her bottom line is that “credit checks are a legal and in some cases appropriate part of pre-employment investigations. And there’s only a glimmer of a chance that credit checks might be considered discriminatory.”
In most cases, you won’t decide not to hire a person based on their credit history per se. You’ll make the decision based on fitness for a particular job or because the credit check points to other issues.
Obviously a person’s credit history has a greater bearing on your decision to hire for specific positions. You’ll pay more attention to it in cases where people will have access to money or where judgment is a factor. You’ll pay less attention if you’re hiring a receptionist.
But in both cases, you want to use the credit history as an indicator of areas to check further, not as a simple black and white hiring choice. Some reasons for doing a pre-employment credit check have nothing to do with credit.
The information on a pre-employment credit check gives you an independent source of information on the job history that you can compare with what’s on a resume or […]
What are you missing?
According to a recent study conducted by J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc., “55% of 161 HR professionals surveyed said they have discovered outright lies on resumes or applications when conducting pre-employment background or reference checks.”
Even though this is a small sample, the numbers look similar to other studies I’ve seen about the amount of bad information on resumes and applications. But the authors of this study make another important point.
Edwin Zalewski, a human resources subject matter expert with J. J. Keller & Associates believes that the 55 percent figure might just be the tip of the iceberg. He points out that 24 percent of the HR professionals his firm polled didn’t do background checks at all. They have no clue if they’re being lied to or not.
This is definitely not a case where ignorance is bliss. One important reason for doing a criminal background check on everyone you hire is to avoid exposure to a charge of negligent hiring.
Negligent hiring works this way. If you don’t exercise “reasonable care” in the hiring process, you can be held liable if someone you hire harms others, physically or otherwise.
Here’s something else to think about. The courts can hold you liable for negligent hiring if you “should have known” about the risk a person you hire might pose to others. In other words, it’s up to you to check the person’s application and background and use due diligence in your process. Not checking is a real risk.
To outsource or not to outsource
HRO Today just carried an article about outsourcing background checks with the title “Staffing Firm Finds a Better Option In Outsourcing Screening Services.” According to the story,
A privately held staffing company based in Seattle, Parker Staffing Service, LLC, provides temporary, contract, and full-time work in administrative, call center, IT, IS, development, QA, healthcare IT, and sales and marketing positions. Its staffing division focuses on the Pacific Northwest, while the technical and search divisions place candidates nationwide. In 1999, Parker decided to outsource background checks on every candidate it placed.
Doing background checks on every candidate is a good idea. But is outsourcing background checks a good decision? The people writing the story probably think it’s a good idea because they’re devoted to Human Resource Outsourcing (HRO). But, in the case of a temporary staffing company, it’s probably more expensive and slower than doing criminal and pre-employment credit checks yourself.
Temporary staffing firms provide workers with specific skills to companies that need to fill specific gaps in their workforce. The most important thing they do is verify that the person they’ll be sending out on a job has the right skills.
This is usually less a matter of reference checking than testing. A clerical worker’s resume might list working with Access and their prior employer might verify that. But the reference check doesn’t answer the question of whether the person can create a query table from scratch using Access. The temp agency must test for that.
That doesn’t mean that background checks […]
EEOC issues fact sheet on employment tests and selection procedures
The US Economic Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reports that charges of job discrimination based on the use of criminal background checks, credit reports, and other screening tools in hiring increased by more than four times between fiscal years 2003 and 2006. To help businesses understand and comply with the laws related to background checks and other tests, the EEOC has issued a new fact sheet on Employment Tests and Selection Procedures.
Here’s a list of the kinds of tests covered by the fact sheet.
Cognitive tests assess reasoning, memory, perceptual speed and accuracy, and skills in arithmetic and reading comprehension, as well as knowledge of a particular function or job;
Physical ability tests measure the physical ability to perform a particular task or the strength of specific muscle groups, as well as strength and stamina in general;
Sample job tasks (e.g., performance tests, simulations, work samples, and realistic job previews) assess performance and aptitude on particular tasks;
Medical inquiries and physical examinations, including psychological tests, assess physical or mental health;
Personality tests and integrity tests assess the degree to which a person has certain traits or dispositions (e.g., dependability, cooperativeness, safety) or aim to predict the likelihood that a person will engage in certain conduct (e.g., theft, absenteeism);
Criminal background checks provide information on arrest and conviction history;
Credit checks provide information on credit and financial history;
Performance appraisals reflect a supervisor’s assessment of an individual’s performance; and
English proficiency tests determine English fluency.
You should visit the EEOC site and review the Fact Sheet. It includes background, applicable laws, […]
Checking out Santa for a store near you
Some days I think I’ve lived too long. One of them was when I caught a story in Florida today about the new reality of being Santa. “Santa gets a makeover” was the title, but the story wasn’t about fashion at all.
It was about the changing reality of being Santa Claus. Today it seems, Santa not only undergoes a background check, but needs insurance and has a very strict code of conduct.
You would hope that if there was anyone you can trust it would be Santa Claus. But the companies hiring people to play that role today don’t want to leave anything to chance.
I read the same news you do, so I understand what’s going on. You don’t want somebody who played Santa at your store to turn up as a pedophile on the evening news or get nailed by a sting operation putting his hand where it shouldn’t go. You don’t want some “jolly old elf” to slip and fall in your mall and then sue you for every penny of profit you’ve made in the last two decades.
I understand it all, but it makes me sad. I grew up in a simpler time when you took your kids to see Santa without wondering if the store did a thorough background check on Old St. Nick. Today, pedophiles and predators abound and they’d like nothing more than a job where they can touch kids and find out personal information.
Just because I’m sad, though, doesn’t mean I don’t think […]