ScreenDiscussion

DSW Joins the Club

2005-04-22T10:06:00.000-04:00

In response to the ongoing series of publicized data theft occurrences that was kicked off by ChoicePoint and whose most recent entrant was Designer Shoe Warehouse, companies in the background screening industry are either touting their good reporting and security practices or else quickly beefing them up. The article above also points out that Equifax, one of the big three credit reporting companies, has created an online resource that offers consumers advice on how to deal with issues related to identity theft issues. There are already all kinds of resources like this available on the internet (just Google “identity theft”), but this is the first big step by a major player in the industry to capitalize on the crisis.

The whole thing reminds me of that scene in Braveheart where the Scottish nobles are all sitting around a table after betraying the Scottish army, and they’re wondering which one of them will be next. As more of these successful hacks are broadcast to the country and world, more hacker s and thefts are no doubt being drawn to try out their skills. Who will be next? Does the security exist to keep out all of the intrusion attempts? I’m not an expert on that subject so I don’t know. What I think we can expect is increased spending on network security by background screening companies, and what follows logically is increased prices for background screening services. Employers and companies that use background screening services then having to pay more for the same services may consider using lower cost screening companies – like the ones that promote quick and easy (and highly fallible) database searches as adequate background checks.

For now I think we can expect to see more occasions of consumer data theft and increased effort on the parts of the various background screening companies, legislators and various software companies to combat it and find a solution.

Cooking Up Some Changes

2005-04-21T21:44:00.000-04:00

Ah, the fun of playing with CSS. It wouldn't be so bad if I had written it all myself, but Blogger (which I'm still using to post blogs, even though ScreenDiscussion has moved. I hope to change that soon, but this is enough for now. I still don't have things set to be equally viewable in both IE and Firefox (not to mention others), but the basic form you see now is close to what it's supposed to be. If it looks hideous on your browser please drop me a line.

Once this is set I'll be able to focus much better on posting relevant to background screening.

Criminal Records No Longer Reportable, But Still Viewable

2005-04-21T08:08:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I wrote that easier access to public records means more accountability for criminals. This is true, but there is something there that nags me that I can’t quite get away from.

There is no doubt in my mind that our society should have consequences for the bad decisions that people make. That’s how life works. However, I’m not convinced that the current system and the current set of standards for using criminal history information is the best. 7 years is typically the standard for reporting criminal history information by background screening companies. A few states even have laws that state that criminal history information past 7 years cannot be used to make employment decisions. Other states have laws that, in effect, say that non-convictions cannot even be reported by background screening companies, much less used by employers.

So let’s say that all that is fine and good. People who were never convicted shouldn’t be punished, and people whose crimes were committed over 7 years ago should be given another chance. I’m fine with that. What I question then is why these cases are still available to the public. If they are no longer relevant, why can anyone go to the local courthouse, or even go online, and pull up the record?

It’s great that there is some level of respect for privacy and even some willingness on the part of lawmakers to account for the possibility of a criminal changing at the professional level, but since we’re talking about public records we’re not just talking about professional access. I could go to the courthouse and find out that a neighbor was charged with driving under the influence four years ago, but that his case was then dismissed. If I were a reasonable person, knowing that wouldn’t change a thing between us. I might be a little cautious, but it wouldn’t change much. However, if I were not such a reasonable person, being very discriminatory and thinking very highly of myself, that knowledge might have a severe effect on the way I treat that neighbor. I might start treating that neighbor as less than human.

Employers have laws that govern their use of criminal information. Neighbors don’t. We’re giving criminal information about individuals to people who may not know how to deal with it properly. Granted, crimes are usually crimes against society. However, I still think we should be careful about how they’re used. We don’t need any more reasons to be distrustful of our fellow citizens.

More on Removing Identifiers from Public Records

2005-04-20T08:02:00.000-04:00

Jason Morris points out on his blog that more identifiers on case records protects consumers from being accused of crimes they may not have committed. He’s right. It’s absolutely essential to the background screening industry to be able to accurately determine who courts records belong to. I wrote about this before, but I think it’s worth bringing up again.

This is, however, a two-edged sword. Maintaining personal data in the court files helps reduce the risk of accusing innocent people of crimes they didn’t commit, but it also follows that since court records are accessible to the public there is still the risk of identity theft. Anyone is able to go into a courthouse and search the court records, which typically contain names and dates of birth, and occasionally Social Security Numbers of people who have been charged with a crime.

What’s best for the consumer? Should they be protected against false accusation when applying for a job or anything else that requires a credit check, or protection from identity theft via personal information on court records? Maybe court records should no longer be public access. Maybe the Federal government should step in and regulate the access to court records across the country so that only qualified and approved companies and organizations can access them. I don’t know what’s best, but we currently have a lose-lose situation.

Criminal History Demand too Much for States

2005-04-19T08:09:00.000-04:00

Maine’s State Bureau of Identification is having a difficult time keeping up with the increased demand for criminal histories. The spokesman for the department said that the number of requests by private companies and law enforcement agencies increased greatly after 9/11 – no big surprise.

They’ve requested additional staff in order to convert paper files to an electronic, searchable database, but this is a situation that is indicative of all of the states that offer criminal histories. Perhaps one of the reasons that states’ criminal departments typically provide poor customer service and slow turnaround time is simple that they’re swamped and, being a government agency, have to wade through a sea of bureaucracy before additional staff and resources can be obtained to fix the problem.

County-level courts, especially those in highly populated counties, also run into the same problems. Many courts are now offering online access to their criminal history information via databases, online or through computer terminals at the courthouse. The quality of the information obtained this way is somewhat questionable, but if that’s all that’s available then whoever is doing the search can’t be expected to do more.

There are certainly states and counties that are still very difficult to work with, but given our nation’s security climate I would expect to be able to conduct criminal history searches much more easily within the next few years. This is good news. It means lower cost for obtaining criminal history information, which means more access for the public and, to some degree, more accountability for criminals.

Private Competition or Government Control - the Best Solution to Identity Theft

2005-04-18T14:30:00.000-04:00

Now that LexisNexis has gotten into the same boat as ChoicePoint through the criminal infiltration of its databases containing thousands of individuals’ personal information, lawmakers are getting antsy to do something about it. The issue that comes to the forefront is whether it’s better to get legislation passed right away or if it’s better to wait and let the competitive marketplace slowly work its way through to a solution. Doing something quickly is championed by some in order to protect our economy since so much of our buying and selling is done online – the primary place criminals go to steal personal data.

The opposition isn’t direct, but rather strongly recommends caution. As the article above points out, passing various pieces of legislation quickly by different states could lead to unforeseen problems. Laws that vary by state create extra work (which means higher prices) for industries that operate on a national level.

A standardized and unified approach to identity theft needs to be taken that efficiently addresses the heart of the problem. This will almost certainly include new legislation, and probably legislation that is passed fairly quickly, but it needs to be done with a national marketplace in mind. Knee-jerk legislation will only bring more headaches.

Four States have Credit-Freeze Laws for Consumer Protection

2005-04-18T07:11:00.000-04:00

I came across a column by Priscilla Post of Kiplinger's Retirement Report the other day that had some news about newer state laws that I wasn't aware of. Here's an excerpt:

The most promising developments preventing identity theft are coming from state legislatures. Four stateshave passed credit-freeze laws and, according to Consumers Union, nearly a dozen more and considering adopting similar consumer safeguards. With a credit freeze in place, your credit files are locked. Businesses and other creditors can't access your credit report and scores without your permission. When you want to unlock your file, you contact the credit bureau and provide it with your security code.

All residents of California and Louisiana can take advantage of their state's optional credit-freeze laws. In Texas, and Vermont, the right to lock a credit file is limited to consumers who have been victims of identity theft and have reported the theft to polict. (The laws in Louisiana and Vermont take effect in July.)

The 11 other states considering adopting their own credit-freeze laws are Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Mrayland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Utah and Washington. And lawmakers in Texas are considering giving all residents the right to use the state's credit-freeze law.

It should be noted that the large credit bureaus already have an option in place for anyone who has been a victim of identity theft to call in and have a disclaimer added to their credit report that requests that anyone considering issuing credit first contact the individual to make sure it's legitimate. It's not a real credit-freeze, but is a similar concept. The only real question I have is how this will impact people's freedoms. In today's paranoid society I can easily see an employer or creditor coming across a credit-freeze or related statement on a credit report and immdiately assuming the worst. I'm not sure how to get around that challenge, but these consumer-protection laws otherwise seem to be a pretty good idea.

State v. Private Enterprise

2005-04-15T12:15:00.000-04:00

When it comes to background screening, the private and public sectors often clash. Maybe that’s not true…it’s more like the public sector treats the private sector like pests to be dealt with. Working for a background screening company I find that state agencies, because they aren’t subject to the same competitive pressures that private companies have to live with, are extremely inflexible and can be very difficult to work with.

For example, an employer is typically under a lot of pressure to get the background screening completed on a job applicant because once they’ve decided on who they want, they want to make an offer right away before that candidate is lost. However, if the employer chooses to do a state criminal check in say, Indiana, it could be eight weeks before the state gets around to completing the check. Who in the world came up with that great system?!? I suppose it’s nice that a state level check is even available, which is not the case in Ohio and a few other states, but the slow turnaround time renders the service nearly useless for many purposes. The employer then has to decide if it’s better to break with their internal policy and not do the state check (or hire the person before it’s complete), or hope that their applicant doesn’t find another job within the next two months.

State policies are much more difficult to influence and hold accountable than are policies held by private companies. For a private company the customer holds the leash. For the government, the people hold the leash and since most people are highly ignorant regarding background screening issues, there isn’t a lot of specific pressure applied. This may change in the future – that’s a big part of the reason I write this blog – but for now government agencies don’t tend to communicate well and don’t have a great deal of accountability for providing good service, high quality information or timely information.

Since private companies must work with government agencies to conduct background screening, greater accountability is needed at the state level. The current state of things drives those of us in the private background screening industry crazy.

True.com's First Victory

2005-04-15T08:30:00.000-04:00

True.com’s proposed law that requires online dating companies to disclose on their websites whether or not a background check was done has passed in its first state – Florida. There are some issues that will have to be worked out, but I think the concept is good. True.com is no doubt seeking a temporary competitive advantage in that industry, but in theory it should make online dating safer. However, as background checking’s scope generally gets larger in our society’s quest for greater security, individuals have to keep in mind that solutions also need to be found that will safeguard our individual freedoms. Some degree of privacy is important too.

The Problem with Databases and Security

2005-04-14T08:03:00.000-04:00

When it comes to doing records searches with databases, the problem isn’t with the database itself. I’ve talked about this several times, but I really don’t hate databases. Databases actually work great and do perfectly the job they were created to do. The problem lies with the people responsible for updating and maintaining the database.

A situation recently occurred where several illegal aliens were working in a prison using state-issued ID cards. Their names were checked in the California Law Enforcement Telecommunication System, and since no criminal record was found they were allowed to stay and work. One of the individuals had been ordered to be deported, but the system didn’t contain that.

This is a typical example of why reliance on databases typically results in security problems. Whether the database is managed by a state agency or by a private company, the quality of the database depends on how often it is updated and the dependability of the processes in place that guarantee that quality information is being loaded into the database.

In the situation above, there clearly needs to be improved standards and processes. Related to employment and background screening, the employer and even the screening companies involved need to be proactive about finding out about the quality of the information in the databases they access. Some questions to ask:

- How often is the database updated?
- Is the source of information for the database reliable and generally free from defect?
- What process ensures that the information is accurately entered into the database?

The employer doesn’t want to hire someone convicted of aggravated assault a month earlier whose record won’t be available for another 6 months, and the background screening company doesn’t want to be sued because they provided inferior information to the employer.

Applicant Authorization Forms – What to Include

2005-04-13T09:01:00.000-04:00

Almost every employer has an application form in some format or another that contains spaces for the applicant’s basic information. This usually includes name, contact information, work history, references, etc. Where applications differ is the terminology used in the section where the applicant signs her name and authorizes the release of her past information. In order to be able to retrieve all the necessary, the following types of information should be included in the text under which the applicant will sign:

• Employment
• Education
• License and certification
• Driving record
• Criminal history
• Credit history

Any other areas can be added as needed, but these are the most common ones. The text should also be reviewed by a lawyer to make sure it’s worded properly and contains any other necessary information.

Once the current, potential employer has this information it is their responsibility to ensure that the information is properly used and secured.

One additional note: Online applications are often used these days and digital signatures have growing popularity, but employers need to be aware that not all agencies, institutions and employers will release information if the authorization form has a typed, “JANE SMITH” in the signature line. They usually want to see a real signature, and in my opinion rightfully so. Can you imagine how easy it is to fake this and get access to the information in someone’s past? Just type up a form and type in the person’s name at the bottom – it’s as easy as that. Unfortunately there are agencies, institutions and employers that do accept electronic signatures and will release personal information. Regulation is needed.

Stay Home

2005-04-12T12:00:00.000-04:00

Tim Blackmore has a great, tongue-in-cheek post about privacy and how all of us happy-go-lucky technology users will one day be very wary about who or what is seeing and using our personal information. It's a great read and I highly recommend it.

Summarizing Privacy v. Security

2005-04-12T11:06:00.000-04:00

I want to see if I can very generally summarize everything I’ve been reading on various blogs about the privacy/security balancing act. If you read this and have another perspective or thoughts that will make this clearer, please feel free to speak up. I think it’s important to note that the perspectives that exist do not have to be mutually exclusive. It’s possible to integrate them.

Everyone agrees that regardless of the enforcement method, security is needed. No one is advocating a free-for-all society where the strong rule the weak and laws aren’t enforced. What the debate comes down to is how to increase security in our society and still maintain privacy for individuals, and there are a few different thoughts.

One of the more common perspectives is that companies should not ask for or retain personal data that is not essential to their business practices. This is just extra data that either costs money to secure or is forgotten and left unsecured. A number of companies have had this kind of data compromised. The rule for consumers should be, “If it’s not needed, don’t give it.” This thought protects the consumer’s personal information and aims to preserve anonymity.

Another thought is presented by Dennis Bailey at Open Society Paradox. He argues that a higher degree of openness in society results in a higher level of accountability for the members of society. If everyone can see what you do, the cost of doing something wrong is much higher. He also points out that anonymity is the terrorist’s friend and that zero anonymity does not necessarily mean zero privacy. It’s a stimulating idea, and I’m interested in learning more about it. As it is, however, I fear a big brother effect since there has to be someone monitoring the system and enforcing laws.

There is, of course, a common belief that all personal data held by companies should be safeguarded by the latest security technology. A hacker shouldn’t have an easy time accessing a company’s database and there should be security standards that companies have to adopt. Also along these lines, businesses should have processes in place designed to ensure that new clients are indeed legitimate businesses. There currently are laws that govern data security in different industries, but I wonder how up-to-date those laws are given the changing state of technology.

Laws provide some incentive to secure stored data, and typically where laws fall short (sometimes by design) in America, competition picks up. Companies that don’t follow good business practices, including in areas related to security, shouldn’t survive. While this might be true in the long run and for many scenarios, security issues present a problem to the model. Insecure companies may eventually go out of business, but until they do there will be a lot of people adversely affected. Since we are a democratic nation and value our individual liberties, the only way to deal with this kind of problem is with legislation that attacks it immediately.

What people disagree with is the kind of legislation that is passed. There is legislation like the Homeland Security Act, which many view as a bumbling attempt to quickly solve some of the problems, and other legislation like the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which is generally accepted as very good for individual citizens. I expect (or really hope) that the laws passed will become more refined and better at addressing the real problem of reconciling high security with individual privacy and freedom.

So what should we do?

New Domain - Please Update Links

2005-04-12T08:05:00.000-04:00

I took the plunge and bought a domain and hosting, so the site now has a permanent home at www.screendiscussion.com. Please update your links. I was tempted to bang my head on the desk several times last night working out the kinks, but it should be working now. You can still view the site at the Blogger address, but it probably won't be around forever. Good times!

ChoicePoint Tracking

2005-04-11T12:05:00.000-04:00

For anyone wondering what the latest ChoicePoint new is, Adam Shostack at Emerging Chaos has been keeping tabs. Check out his collection.

It will be extremely interesting to find out what, if any, legislation is passed as a result of the publicity this occurrence of data theft has received. Hopefully any change will work toward a solution that is win-win in terms of personal privacy and security. Regardless of the outcome, I suspect that change is on the horizon and that it will be good for background companies that are up to snuff with good security policies.

I just wanted to make anyone who is interested aware of Adam’s resource.

Consistency is Important

2005-04-11T11:56:00.000-04:00

Difficult questions about background screening and security about in our society. What kind of background check should be done? Should a different background check be done on employees in job X versus employees in job Y? What should be process be for when we decide not to hire someone? Are there hidden loopholes that leave the door open to a lawsuit?

I don’t know about other people, but my college HR classes definitely didn’t cover all of these issues. Since background screening’s rise to popularity has taken place in probably the last 10 years (or less), there are a lot of industry professionals out there who don’t have a lot of past experience with these questions and are forging ahead blindly. Scarier still is the fact (yes, I happen to know that it’s a fact) that there are a number of companies who are making these decisions either without legal counsel or with a legal counsel who doesn’t provide good advice on these matters.

There are a couple basics to keep in mind. First, let the Fair Credit Reporting Act be the guide. It’s really not that hard to read, and there are a number of resources available to help make decisions about the fine points of its interpretation.

Second, be consistent. In this hypersensitive age of lawsuits and “personal rights,” it’s extremely important for companies to maintain consistent standards that guide them through the decisions that have to be made in the background screening process. Not doing so invites potential lawsuits from people who feel like they weren’t treated fairly during the applicant process or disqualified for a good reason.

On a side note how did we ever get so hung up on ourselves, anyway? Are privacy rights taken too far in some areas? Maybe this is a good topic for another post.

Comparing Background Screening Companies - Confusing Services

2005-04-11T08:20:00.000-04:00

Deciding which company to use to do background checks is an important decision. I have another post that lists what questions to ask a screening company, and here are a few more thoughts to add to that:

1. The first step is always to decide what kind of background check you want to perform. This depends on your industry, position type, budget, etc.

2. Compare apples to apples. This is a big one. Most established, reputable background screening companies offer similar services, but they're often packaged differently and given different names. This can be highly confusing, so be cautious about discounting a company just because the title of one service sounds like it is better or different than a similar service at a different company.

One company might offer a Complete 7-Year Criminal History, and another might offer a National Criminal History Search. They each highlight a different aspect of the search, but they could be the same thing. It's important for you, the potential customer, to know enough about the industry to be able to ask the right questions. For example, seven years is the industry standard for criminal searches. No company is going to be able to consistently pull criminal records past 7 seven years from different court systems, and some states even limit the number of years back information found in a records search can be used to make employment decisions to 7 years.

Regarding a national search, it doesn't really exist. However, a company might say that a search is national only because they have the ability to search county courthouses in just about every county in the country, and will do so depending on where the applicant has lived. This isn’t a unique ability - any background screening company worth its salt will be able to do this.

Since most employers don’t know the ins and outs of the industry, the important thing for the employer is to ask lost about the sources of the information. A screening company isn't required to release information about their sources to prospective clients, but it is required to release source information, upon request, to its actual clients. If the company won't give you enough information about its sources to enable you to compare it to other companies, you might want to consider not using this company. It's a fine line, but you have to be able to make an educated decision. Also, a company not willing to work with you up front to help you make a good decision might also be a company that gives you headaches when you need information later on.

Online Dating Moving Toward Background Checking

2005-04-08T12:33:00.000-04:00

The movement headed by True.com is gaining momentum. While news laws in Michigan and Florida, among other states, requiring online dating services to state whether or not a background check was performed on its members are being introduced, GetogetherSafe.com, another online dating service, is ahead of the curve and has already contracted with Intelius, Inc. to do background checks on its daters. One of the issues with doing this is for people using these services to maintain anonymity, and it appears that this has been addressed by GetogetherSafe.com and Intelius.

There are some opponents of these new laws, but most of them are the large and established dating services that don’t want to take a hit. It’s inevitable that these laws will be passed eventually in one form or another. Areas on the Internet where people meet specifically for dating purposes are bound to attract people who try to find someone to take advantage of, and until now there have been no standards in place to make sure people aren’t using fake identities.

Individual Freedom Called Into Question

2005-04-08T09:15:00.000-04:00

Suppose the U.S. did adopt a policy of increased surveillance where there was, in theory, a benevolent “Big Brother” that monitored citizen activity. People with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, right? The issue, as presented in a situation where a County Sheriff accessed driving record information for questionable purposes, becomes whether or not personal freedom really is enhanced. The hang up I have with such a system is that there will always, or maybe I should say eventually, be someone who can’t be trusted.

I suspect that, similar to communism, it might be a case where the theory is great but the practical experience of it is awful. It would be wonderful if we could completely trust the government officials who monitored and enforced such a surveillance system. I once heard someone say that a dictatorship is the best form of government, so long as the dictator made wise decisions and cared more for the nation than for himself. Criminals are punished and law-abiding citizens are free to enjoy life. But the reality is that people aren’t perfect and anyone, regardless of how uprightly they live their lives, are highly susceptible to corruption.

Enter democracy. As far as I see, this is the best system for establishing a safe place to live. There is a high degree of transparency, evidenced by the public availability of all kinds of personal information, including criminal records, and strict laws are in place that govern the use of this information. True, there is a lot of wrangling over how to maintain this system as new technologies develop that enable, for example, crimes like identity theft, and it’s easy to start thinking that if we implemented a sweeping change and radically changed the system by moving toward an extreme (extreme openness or extreme confidentiality) that there would be a better solution. However, I tend to think that continuing to struggle along the middle road, as difficult as it is, is the best way to ensure personal freedoms while maintaining a reasonable level of security at all levels. As for the abuse of authority mentioned above, our current system of checks and balances should deal decisively with the offender.

Japan – Companies Forced to Disclose Database Use

2005-04-07T13:18:00.000-04:00

A new law in Japan will require companies that hold personal information in databases for over 5,000 people will be required to tell those individuals why it is keeping their information. It has its critics, but is a big step toward ensuring the privacy rights of individuals.

What would this look like in the U.S.? If the popularity of the No Call Registry is any indication, it would be embraced with open arms by the general public. People generally like to protect their own privacy, and being made aware of how many companies actually hold their personal information would probably result in a public outcry. The ones who would disagree with it, obviously, would be the companies holding the information.

In the background checking industry, this kind of law would have far-reaching effects. For example, databases kept by companies like National Background Data allow background screening companies to identify where an individual has lived in the past. This information is invaluable for knowing where to look for criminal records.

I assume that such a law excludes government agencies. Our criminal system has public access to its records as a key component and I don’t see that changing in the near future. If it did, the background checking industry as we know it would no longer exist.

I’m curious - does anyone see this kind of legislation ever passing in the U.S.?

Background Checks - Not a Perfect Solution

2005-04-07T08:37:00.000-04:00

An article in Information Week states that the Department of Homeland Security is just now considering the impact of increased security on personal freedom. I’m glad they’re trying to tackle this, but it’s a rather obvious question that should have been taken into account a few years ago. Granted, in an emergency situation (9/11) the first priority is safety and stabilization, but I’m still surprised that it’s taken three-and-a-half years for the topic to be officially addressed.

The example cited is a program called Secure Flight, the goal of which is to create a system that identifies individuals who are higher risk for flying and will thus have a more extensive background check performed on them. Currently, as far as I know, the system in place for identifying potential terrorists traveling on planes is very weak. Depending on how it’s done, beefing it up would certainly help.

But background checks can only do so much. I’m deviating slightly from the main point of the article, but this is something I think needs to be discussed. Properly done, the new system for doing background checks on airline passengers might catch people who have criminal backgrounds or, in the case of terrorists, are associated with terrorist groups (Several governments, as well as the U.N., release watch lists of terrorist names). The reason this system is needed is that conducting a thorough background check on all airline passengers is cost-prohibitive, and we know the airline industry doesn’t need any more financial challenges.

The problem with background checks is that past activity is not always an indication of future behavior. This is where extreme reliance on background checks falls short. Background checks are helpful for avoiding some problems in the workplace and also help companies avoid legal liability in the U.S., but when it comes to terrorism the stakes are much higher. A smart terrorist group will choose to use people who have no criminal records and are not on any of the watch lists.

Maybe they’ll be able to find a good solution to the security v. privacy issue, but I expect there will always be a tradeoff. At best they’ll be able to mitigate risk at a minimal cost of privacy. What we need to consider is how much privacy we’re willing to sacrifice for an imperfect solution.

Staffing Agencies and Background Checks

2005-04-06T08:39:00.000-04:00

Staffing agencies are in a unique position when it comes to conducting background checks. They work with a variety of customers, many of which have standard policies when it comes to conducting background checks. Some customers are no doubt satisfied to know that a background check was done, regardless of its quality. Others, however, have very strict guidelines when it comes to the background check requirements of everyone employed on its behalf.

What is a staffing agency to do? There are three basic variations that can be done. One option is to tailor the background check to the standards set by the customer with which the employee with work. The advantage to this method is that the staffing agency doesn’t pay extra for unnecessary services. The disadvantages are that the employee may have to be re-checked if she is going to work for another of the staffing agency’s customers, and that the staffing agency has to deal with keeping track of the type of background check performed on each one of its employees.

Another option is for the staffing agency to conduct the same background check on all of its employees. The advantages here are that it’s very easy for the agency to keep track of the services ran on each of its employees and it’s very easy to communicate to its clients what kind of background check was ran. The main disadvantage is cost. The staffing agency would have to meet the standards of its most demanding client, which no doubt means a hefty price for the background check. Customers with lower standards may not want to pay the higher price when staffing agency B will charge less for background check expenses.

The final option is a mix of the two. The staffing agency can set a standard somewhere in middle that will satisfy the security requirements of a significant number of its customers. Employees that are then sent to customers with higher standards can have an additional background check performed – kind of like “high security clearance” in the military.

Staffing agencies do have extra challenges with it comes to background checks, but there are good options.

Quality, Consistency and Cost in Background Checking

2005-04-06T08:18:00.000-04:00

The Green Bay Press-Gazette published an article that mentions the fact that cost is a factor in how deep school districts dig when it comes to conducting background checks on employees and volunteers. Most of the schools mentioned have polices that govern the type of background check performed for individuals in different positions, but the problem is one of cost.

The schools named in the article have high standards for teachers, but varying, and often lower, standards for doing background checks on staff and volunteers. That might be okay if the teachers were the only ones that interacted with the students, but if the staff and volunteers are ever around students then the students could potentially be around someone with serious criminal convictions that weren’t uncovered by the cheaper background check. The level of liability is determined by the lowest common denominator in terms of security, and in this case the staff and volunteers whose background check is frequently of lower quality than that of the teachers’.

How far do we take this idea? Should a business run the same background check on everyone who spends time within its walls and interacts with its employees or customers? I expect that a vendor hired by a company would be responsible for conducting a background check on its own employees, but the company that hired the vendor should be responsible to ensure that the background check the vendor conducts is up to the hiring company’s standards.

Increased security, because of its significant cost for a company, organization or institution, definitely has a significant economic impact. For these entities, especially ones without plenty of cash, finding a way to do consistent background checks on all employees and volunteers without breaking the bank is a challenge. When it comes to schools and other public institutions, are taxpayers willing to shoulder this extra cost?

Adverse Action – Applicant Rights and Employer Obligations

2005-04-05T10:58:00.000-04:00

Job applicants are given certain rights by the Fair Credit Reporting Act when it comes to adverse, or negative, information on their consumer report. Consumer report is the term used by the FCRA that refers to the "background check" report provided by a consumer reporting agency. The definition of adverse action by the FCRA is as follows:

(i) a denial or cancellation of, an increase in any charge for, or a reduction or other adverse or unfavorable change in the terms of coverage or amount of, any insurance, existing or applied for, in connection with the underwriting of insurance;

(ii) a denial of employment or any other decision for employment purposes that adversely affects any current or prospective employee;

(iii) a denial or cancellation of, an increase in any charge for, or any other adverse or unfavorable change in the terms of, any license or benefit described in section 604(a)(3)(D) [§ 1681b]; and

(iv) an action taken or determination that is

(I) made in connection with an application that was made by, or a transaction that was initiated by, any consumer, or in connection with a review of an account under section 604(a)(3)(F)(ii)[§ 1681b]; and

(II) adverse to the interests of the consumer.

It obviously covers more than employment, but that’s all I’m going to discuss here. I don’t want to bore you with legal documentation, but here is the exact wording from the FCRA regarding requirements of users of consumer reports. In our discussion, users of consumer reports are employers and consumer reporting agencies are background screening companies used by the employers.

(a) Duties of users taking adverse actions on the basis of information contained in consumer reports. If any person takes any adverse action with respect to any consumer that is based in whole or in part on any information contained in a consumer report, the person shall
(1) provide oral, written, or electronic notice of the adverse action to the consumer;

(2) provide to the consumer orally, in writing, or electronically

(A) the name, address, and telephone number of the consumer reporting agency (including a toll-free telephone number established by the agency if the agency compiles and maintains files on consumers on a nationwide basis) that furnished the report to the person; and

(B) a statement that the consumer reporting agency did not make the decision to take the adverse action and is unable to provide the consumer the specific reasons why the adverse action was taken; and

(3) provide to the consumer an oral, written, or electronic notice of the consumer's right

(A) to obtain, under section 612 [§ 1681j], a free copy of a consumer report on the consumer from the consumer reporting agency referred to in paragraph (2), which notice shall include an indication of the 60-day period under that section for obtaining such a copy; and

(B) to dispute, under section 611 [§ 1681i], with a consumer reporting agency the accuracy or completeness of any information in a consumer report furnished by the agency.

What all of this means is that if an employer chooses to deny employment to a job applicant based on the information reported by the background screening company, the employer must notify the applicant and give him a chance to respond. The employer is not required to adhere to the FCRA’s adverse action policy if the decision not to hire is based on information outside the consumer report.

If the applicant wants to dispute the information, he is directed to the background screening company and the information the applicant claims is incorrect should be re-investigated. If you work with a background screening company that doesn’t have a process in place for handling applicant disputes, look for a new company to do your background checks.

Does this really happen often? In addition to the problems with database searches, the actual court records themselves often contain errors. The adverse action process is on the side of the applicant. It gives applicants the opportunity to work with the appropriate agency to correct erroneous information.

There are a few exceptions, but most courts willingly work with individuals to address problems with their data. The problem applicants have is that companies that have compiled databases from public courthouse records don’t, as far as I know, have any incentive to take the time to correct their records. The final report has to be corrected each time the information is used adversely by an employer, but if the background screening company isn’t the same company as the one that houses the database with faulty information then the consumer report provided by the screening company will be changed but the database will most likely not be corrected.

Also noteworthy, the states of California (surprise surprise), Oklahoma and Minnesota all require employers to provide a place on their applications where job applicants can choose to receive or decline to receive a copy of their report. In all states applicants are allowed to request a copy of the report, but in these states they are directly notified of their right.

Adverse action protects the interests of the consumer. I don’t have the information off-hand, but there have been cases where large companies have had to pay very hefty damages for not following the adverse action process outlined by the FCRA. Even though precedent has been set for the enforcement of adverse action, there are still a number of companies that are either ignorant of it or that choose not follow it. Doing so denies individuals the opportunity to correct information that will adversely affect them in the future.

Lying Applicants

2005-04-05T08:02:00.000-04:00

Most employers devote a section of their application to the applicant’s criminal history, asking the applicant to list any past convictions. Contrary to what the average job applicant probably thinks, many employers do not automatically disqualify the applicant from employment if there is a conviction. I have, in fact, known employers to turn down job applicants for lying about a conviction that otherwise would have been passable.

Applicant responses to adverse information on their background check is often interesting. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives applicants the right to dispute the information reported about them, so they will often follow up with the reporting agency to see if the report can be changed. Some are nice, some are not. Some are right, most are not. The report occasionally ends up being updated with correct information, but usually it appears that the applicant lied on the application in hopes that the truth about his past wouldn’t be discovered.

The reasons applicants usually dispute information reported from the background check are 1) the reported information really is wrong, 2) they don’t understand the information (a dismissed charge is not the same as an expunged case), or 3) they’re wrong but they hope to bully the reporting agency into changing the record. Number 2 is relatively easy to deal with as it just involves an education session, but numbers 1 and 3 usually require the company to do extra, and sometimes costly, legwork.

What’s interesting is the reactions of applicants once the information has been re-verified and nothing changes. Sometimes the applicant will curse and yell and threaten lawsuits once he "figures out" what happens, only to never be heard from again. Other applicants will suddenly remember that they really were charged with a felony offense last year, even though a week before they would have sworn on their mother’s graves it wasn’t them. The stories would be funny were they not so sad.

Sometimes an applicant does get away with lying on the application, but it’s probably not worth the risk, especially if the conviction was a misdemeanor and not a felony. It’s better to disclose the information up-front. Lying on an application will probably bar an applicant from employment at the company forever, where convictions in many states will no longer be reportable after a given number of years have passed. It’s best not to permanently burn bridges.

The Identity Theft Dilemma

2005-04-04T11:28:00.000-04:00

Emergent Chaos has a good post on Identity Theft. In it he states,

Stop asking for social security numbers. If you can't stop asking, stop storing them. If you can't stop storing them, store them on an isolated database with tightly restricted access…Get back to basics, and ask how your organization can respect your customers, rather than putting them at risk.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I think there are two sides to avoiding identity theft. One is reactive and one is proactive. Among other things, the reactive side includes making new legislation that allows for harsher punishment of those who engage in identity theft and frequent technology "fixes" for existing security holes.

The proactive side is, as mentioned on Emergent Chaos, is to take steps in the first place to prevent sensitive personal information from being stored somewhere vulnerable. Minimize the distribution of personal data. Do all these companies that ask for Social Security Numbers really need them? I think this is a good question to ask.

The obvious downside to this is that yes, some of these companies really do need sensitive, personal information in order to provide the consumer with a necessary service. For example, the three key identifiers needed by a company performing a background check are name, date of birth and Social Security Number. Additional identifiers are sometimes available, but theser are the core three. Without these the accuracy of the results of the background check is questionable. The dilemma that a job applicant faces is that failure to provide this information to an employment screening company for a background check could result in the loss of a job. In the wrong hands, this is enough information to wreak havoc on someone’s personal life.

It’s a lose-lose situation for the applicant since we know that companies that do background checks don’t always properly safeguard their data. A person applies for a job and has to provide sensitive personal information in order to get the job, but providing the information potentially opens the door to identity theft.

What real solutions are there? A job applicant has no control over the company used by an employer to conduct background checks. It’s all up to the employer, so the applicant has to hope that the employer chose a responsible company. An employer could more easily choose an employment screening company if there were standards that existed to regulate the use of personal data. For example, not all employment screening companies sell access to their database. Companies that adhered to established standards would stand out from the crowd and the job applicant might feel a little safer about providing personal information.

Another solution would be for the government’s public records systems to utilize less "stealable" methods of personal identification. Fingerprinting is a viable option that’s been used for years by the government and is now slowly making its way into the public sector.

I’m sure there are a number of additional perspectives that could be discussed here, but I think this is the key issue for consumers regarding identity theft. The distribution of personal data can, and probably should, be limited more than it currently is, but this is only viable to a certain degree given the current state of our society.

Background Checks Must Be Relevant

2005-04-01T15:37:00.000-05:00

Board members for the Jefferson County airport in Colorado were taken to task for conducting background checks on its lessees that delved too deeply. The story caught my attention because I don’t hear much about background checks being too thorough.

A number of officials involved stepped forward and agreed that the background checks were far too revealing given they were being done on people leasing space from the airport. I imagine that the checks were done simply because air security is a hot topic right now. The report also stated that each lessee signed a release form that authorized the checks and that no negative action was taken against the lessees as a result of the background checks.

So why the fuss? Certainly no laws were broken and no one was adversely affected. Anyone in a position of ownership is also in the position of liability, be it as an employer or an airport board member. Therefore it’s up to that individual to ensure the safety of the organization, facility, etc. and that means conducting a background check that the owner deems appropriate.

The problems arise when the owner can’t show that the information collected in the background check is relevant to the situation. For example, an employer might be hard pressed to show that it was necessary to run a credit check on someone who will be standing in the same spot in an assembly line for 8 hours. It probably won’t cause a problem unless the person is denied a job because of it (or a lease, in the case of the airport situation), but it’s a safe practice to remember that the job function needs to be related to the kind of background check performed.

Here’s a overview of common background check components.

Why I Blog about Background Checking

2005-04-01T12:47:00.000-05:00

The reason I blog about background checking is that there are very few people doing it. There are a number of blogs about closely related issues, but few about this specific industry. The ones that are out there are mostly operated by a company that does background checks in an attempt to drum up business (which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing), and even if they have the best of intentions it’s hard to take the advice of someone who is paid money to write. Here’s an interesting post about this topic.

I’ve worked in the industry for several years and have found that there are a lot of misconceptions about background checking that are held by employers and “consumers,” or individuals on whom a background check is performed. There are also a lot of bad practices on the part of companies that actually do the background checking, and I hope to expose some of these practices and help employers and individuals make better informed decisions. I don’t have any grand notions about holding the industry accountable with this blog, but I do hope that generating more candid discussion on the Internet about the subject of background checking will save at least a few people from unnecessary stress and headaches.

On a practical note, blogger.com is driving me crazy. There have been a number of problems and errors with posting lately. It also lacks a few features that paid providers offer. I don't want to spend a lot of time on the technical side, but I will if I have to. Don't be surprised if ScreenDiscussion gets its own domain name in a few months.

Open Society – Openness versus Privacy

2005-04-01T12:29:00.000-05:00

Dennis Bailey of Open Society Paradox mentions that the Transportation and Security Administration’s Registered Traveler program has been very successful. It allows frequent flyers to submit to a background check, and after that they can go through the “express” security check.

I am very intrigued by Dennis Bailey’s “Open Society” ideas. A person with nothing to hide has nothing to fear. This is the whole idea behind the emphasis on confession in the Roman Catholic Church, right? It’s very difficult to live with your own failings, but if you take the risk of sharing them with someone else without being condemned by that person then you experience a sense of freedom and forgiveness.

Exposure involves accountability, and in this case voluntarily allowing the TSA to do a background check ensures, in theory, that no convicted criminals are traveling the airways. There is the quality of the background check that is done that needs to be taken into account (just because it’s done by the government doesn’t automatically mean it’s flawless), but in theory it seems like a good idea. I would still be concerned about those individuals, however, who are criminally-minded but smart enough not to have yet been caught. These are the people who can often be the most dangerous.

In general Dennis Bailey’s ideas provide a lot of food for thought. What would an open society look like? It would probably provide incentive to avoid criminal activity, but what would those people do who have a less than sterling history? Does it provide any room for a second chance? I’ve never been convicted of a crime, but I’m far from perfect. I would imagine that completely embracing such a philosophy could potentially create a society of priggish snobs. I haven’t read all of his materials, so maybe he addresses this concern. I don’t mean any offense to Dennis Bailey - I really am intrigued by his ideas. I just have a few reservations.

Background Check Quality Standards

2005-04-01T08:54:00.000-05:00

There is a great need for high standards in the delivery of information in the background checking industry. Important decisions hinge on the information that is reported in a background check, so it needs to be highly accurate.

If you are an employer, it is important that you know what kind of standards are in place at the company you use for your background checks. Documented processes is a starting point, and any decent company should be able to provide you with either the documents themselves or a written guarantee that they exist.

The second thing to ask is what steps the company takes to ensure that accurate information is reported. Aside from whether or not the company exclusively uses databases, which should clue you in that they aren’t reporting highly accurate information, make sure they have a data-entry system with safeguards against errors. This usually means having a system that ensures that more than one set of eyes review the data before it is given to the customer.

Following this, what about the next level? Why not an industry-wide quality standard like that of ISO 9003? It would give companies an opportunity to see who’s really serious about the accuracy of their data. Admittedly I don’t know a lot about the ISO standards and similar official quality programs, but if there is an industry that could use them it is the background checking industry.

Sharing Criminal Records

2005-03-31T13:03:00.000-05:00

A company called Thinkstream has developed a way to allow polices officers to search for criminal records from multiple sources - state and municipal - from a laptop or hand-held computer in their squad cars. This is definitely a valuable tool for the police.

Dennis at Open Society Paradox commented that it won’t be long before this spreads to the state level. He’s right, and it’s actually happening now. There is a trend where county courts, and some municipal courts, are passing along all of the criminal record information in their files and databases to the state level. There it is compiled and made available to select agencies and employers to search. There are a number of states that offer such a search.

While this is generally a good thing – as is anything that makes background checking simpler – there is still a question of standards and information quality control. I’ll use Minnesota as an example. Their state criminal records database isn’t too bad, but the following issues should be noted:

- Each county has the option of updating the state’s database electronically, by fax or by mail. Electronic is obviously the best because it is fast and only one human is involved. Faxing is second best, but is a little slower and requires a second human to interpret the received fax. Mailing is the worst as there are two humans involved and because there is a time lag in which updated records at the court are not received and available to be entered by the state for at least 2 to 3 days.

- The state’s database is searchable by name and date of birth. A name or date of birth that is off by even one digit won’t be found. In most counties, however, near-matches that are a result of careless data entry can still be found.

- There are no universal standards as to what is reported. Minnesota only reports criminal records, while Kentucky, for example, reports criminal and traffic records.

- It is unknown what measures each state takes to ensure the accuracy of the information in its database. This will probably be the topic of a future entry, but quality standards like the ISO 900x standards exist for a reason.

It’s really nice to be able to search state records quickly and easily, but anyone who does this needs to do a little digging to understand the potential holes in the information being searched. Hopefully the police officers already know this, but having heard from a few I’m not confident.

Identity Theft - Real Solutions Needed

2005-03-31T08:06:00.000-05:00

The LA Times reports that legislation is being proposed to address the increasingly common problem of identity theft. The law is aimed at California, where the article says that identity is more prevalent that in any other state, but I expect we’ll be seeing similar legislation proposed in other states soon.

It’s good to see that it’s being taken more seriously, but as long as a person’s identity is tied to numbers on paper there will still be problems. It will be a never-ending competition between those who steal identities and law enforcement seeking to prevent it from happening. A more foolproof system of identification based on biometrics will probably emerge eventually, but we’re looking at some serious $$ to put that in place.

In the meantime people, and specifically employers, have to learn how to deal properly with the impact of identity theft. Right now anyone who has been the victim of identity theft needs to contact the three major credit reporting bureaus, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. They will put an alert on the individual’s report that requires anyone seeking to open credit with the individual’s information to first contact the individual directly for confirmation.

However, a problem with the current process is not the process itself, but the way an individual or employer reads the credit report. Some employers are extremely paranoid and anything that says *Alert* will make them want to disqualify an applicant for employment. So in addition to the hassle of dealing with correcting problems caused by a stolen identity, a person might also lose out on future job offers.

Solutions are needed. Like I said above, biometrics might be a good longer-term solution. In the shorter-term laws like the ones being proposed in California will no doubt help, though they’ll have to keep pace with current methods of identity theft. Recipients of credit reports also need to be educated about how to properly interpret the reports, and in the employment field this means checking with legal counsel before making any serious decisions. Turning a job applicant down because he or she was the victim of identity theft is a decision that probably won’t fare well in court.

Redesign

2005-03-30T13:12:00.000-05:00

As you can see, I just redesigned the site. It was a bit frustrating doing it through Blogger's interface and I actually entertained thoughts of paying for hosting and doing it all myself with Wordpress or Movable Type. Hopefully Blogger will catch up with the changes within the next few minutes.

People Change

2005-03-30T12:25:00.000-05:00

An article posted in the Green Bay Press-Gazette told the story of a Green Bay School employee who was recently arrested for violent behavior and drug abuse. The school had done a background check on him and found convictions, but they were from the early 80’s and they decided they were far enough in the past that they shouldn’t be a problem.

Unfortunately they were wrong, but it raises the question of how much past behavior should be allowed to influence present decisions. The more recent laws that require sex offenders to register when they move are along the lines of a modern day scarlet letter. I don’t imagine Hawthorne would be very happy with us.

Most state prison systems are referred to as Departments of Corrections, but why can’t we, as a society, learn to forgive? Learn to really encourage and reward moral change? Is it a case of the few spoiling it for the many, or do those of us without criminal histories enjoy being able to look down on those who have made poorer choices? Forgiveness can be a tough road for the ones doing the forgiving. I once heard someone say (if you know who, please tell me) that you can tell a lot about a nation by the way it treats its criminals. What do our practices say about us?

Public Availability of Private Information

2005-03-29T12:52:00.000-05:00

PACER, an online search for criminal records at the federal level is available to the public. For a small fee, anyone can do a criminal records search. The nice thing is that it’s searchable by district, which means that someone only has to know very generally where a person has lived in order to check for records. Records at the federal level are usually only the high level cases, but the greater area coverage and low price still makes it a nice supplement to a background check.

One of the biggest downsides is that the records can only be searched by name, an occurrence that is becoming more common even at the lower courts. This might not be a problem if the name being searched is pretty unique, but if someone has been cursed with a common name then look out. A search on a name like “John Thompson” will likely return criminal records in just about every federal district, and since only names are accessible to the public it can be pretty difficult to determine whether or not the records belong to the individual in question.

While it makes sense to curb identify theft by not providing a person’s name, date of birth and Social Security Number to the general public, in practice it’s a double-edged sword. Identity theft is limited, but it also means that an employer has to deal with how to use the information in deciding whether or not to make a job offer. There have been plenty of situations where a person wasn’t offered a job because of faulty information retrieved in a background check, and this newer practice doesn’t help things much.

Catch-22? I think so. However, I also think there are some potential solutions. Very basically, courts can take the information they have and just report the last four digits of the SSN. Some courts do this already and it seems like a no-brainer to me (except that PACER’s decision indicates otherwise). Moving forward, another solution would be to incorporate biometrics identification methods into the criminal justice system. There would have to be some cooperation on the part of the employment screening industry, employers and the criminal system, but I can see it being a viable option down the road. Fingerprints are obviously already being used, in some ways very efficiently, but they have yet to be used on a large scale in the public sector.

Whose Responsibility is Safety in Online Dating?

2005-03-29T08:14:00.000-05:00

The debate, driven by True.com, about whether or not legislation should be passed that requires online dating companies to disclose whether or not a background check was performed continues in Michigan. At issue here is the familiar debate over how much involvement the government really should take and how much responsibility, and therefore potential for danger, should be left in the hands of the individuals involved.

I was glad to read that not only would the proposed bill require companies offering online dating services be required to disclose whether or not a background check was done, but that it would also require those companies to state the limitations of background checks. It would be silly for someone to use the dating service thinking that she would be completely safe simply because there is a statement that says a background check was performed. For starters, how would the company verify that that the name of the individual is correct? The Social Security Administration, doesn’t allow potential employers to check a Social Security Number against a name until after a person has been hired, so I would be surprised if they allowed access to its information for mere dating purposes. I don’t see a way to guarantee that an individual listing with a dating service is who he says he is.

The second issue deals with the interpretation of the results. I very briefly addressed this earlier, and the problem here is that someone who looks at another person’s background check through the online dating service probably won’t know how to interpret the results. Most employers have an attorney that specializes in employment law who guides the company through the proper way to interpret and use the information retrieved from a background check. Who is going to help people using the dating service decide how to interpret the results? Will state laws that govern what records are and are not reportable in the employment industry carry over to the dating arena? Some states don’t allow records past 7 years to be reported, but I can see that kind of standard causing problems in the dating industry.

How will the online service decide what kind of background check will be done and who will do the background check? How will it be decided where to do a background check? Will prior addresses be verified and criminal checks done in those counties? How will someone dispute the results of his or her background check? How will damages from incorrect information be rectified? I suspect that if the entire online dating industry is forced to do background checks, or state that a background check wasn’t performed, most companies will opt to do a cheap, low-quality database search. This will give people using the service a very flawed sense of security and, I would think, have high potential for serious lawsuits.

If this legislation passes anywhere, these issues will have to be addressed. The issue is very problematic, and for an industry that is still struggling with standardization this debate promises to muddy the waters even more. People using dating services will need to be reminded that they still need to exercise caution when meeting someone else, even if a background check was done, and they’ll also need to realize that background checks aren’t perfect and that the information in a person’s background check doesn’t always define the person.

Arrogance in the Industry

2005-03-28T09:47:00.000-05:00

I was once discussing the results of someone’s background check with a client and the client made a statement that was something to the effect of, "These people do things that we would never do." This client in particular made hiring decisions for a high-profile, international company, but I’ve heard the same sentiment expressed in either words or demeanor by a number of other people involved in doing background checks.

This attitude is sickening. We live and work with people who are very similar to us and somehow feel justified in looking down on people who haven’t had our so-called "advantages in life. We easily say (or think, if we aren’t bold enough to say it) that the person who was convicted for drug abuse or prostitution is nothing like us and that we are much "better people." Of course, we probably don’t bother to define what a "better person" really is. I personally think we equate "better" with someone who is willing to live by middle to upper class society’s accepted behaviors and conventions.

The truth is, we don’t really know what made that individual commit those crimes. We don’t know that she was born into a culture of drugs and that after making some bad decisions she’s now trying to break out of the pattern. Maybe she made fewer bad decisions than those around her and maybe she’s becoming a "better person" that we ourselves are in the truer, moral sense. We like to think we never would have done what "those people" do, but that’s not true at all. Every one of us is capable of any character flaw we see in another. As the saying goes, "It takes one to know one." Given the same circumstances, and perhaps having made the same small, bad decisions that weren’t necessarily illegal, we might be in the same position as that person we’re looking down upon.

Don’t misunderstand me. Background checking is important in today’s world and you have to have legally-defensible standards in place to help you make appropriate hiring decisions. What I’m saying is that it can be difficult to be the one who points the finger. Background checking can be very de-humanizing, and unless we’re hoping to live a lonely life, we need to be careful that we don’t think that an imperfect background check means that a person’s life has less value. As humans we’re often trying to set ourselves apart. However, we need to realize that nobody is perfect or exempt from some kind of temptation.

Background Check Before or After

2005-03-25T07:47:00.000-05:00

Council members in Pennsylvania are mixed about whether to do the background check before or after offering an applicant the position of Borough Manager. It’s not a high tension article or circumstance, but it brings up an issue worth discussing.

This is a question that Human Resources and hiring managers have to answer with regards to background checks on new employees. Should the background check be done before hiring the prospective employee, forcing him or her to wait until it’s finished and hoping they don’t get another offer in the interim, or should the applicant be hired contingent upon a successful background check?

The route that I believe is clearly the safest, and therefore best, is to conduct the background check before the new employee’s first day at work. It would be difficult for a company to defend itself in court if a new employee did something violent on his first day of work when the individual’s violent background would have been uncovered had a background check been conducted before the company opened its doors to him. Additionally, it can be very awkward to tell a person that he is hired one day and fired the next as a result of what came back on his background check.

On the other hand, background checks can potentially take a long time depending on the type of checks being conducted. It can take several weeks to receive the results of a request for a criminal record check sent to the State of Indiana, and a great job applicant will quite possibly have other offers by that time. Another difficulty is that employers often don't want to ask for the applicant's date of birth until after an offer has been made in order to avoid possible legal tangles. One way around this is to have the applicant contact (or be contacted by) the company doing the background check. The applicant can give his date of birth directly to that company and employer doesn't need to know what it is.

What is a solution? Some companies decide to go halfway. They will put emphasis on key pieces of the background check that can usually be finished in two or three days, such as searching for criminal records in counties, and then make an offer that is contingent on the success of the remaining portion of the background check. This keeps people out who have a history of endangering others, leaves the door open for the employer to disqualify applicants for employment if other negative information is found, such as falsifying previous employment or education records, and lets the employer make a fairly quick offer. One thing that should definitely be avoided is delaying the start of the background check for over a week once the new employee has been hired. This can make for a very difficult situation for everyone involved - and I've seen it happen.

Like I said, it’s not a very exciting topic, but one that a lot of people in companies are faced with on a regular basis. Hope this helps.

Security In a Changing Nation

2005-03-24T09:23:00.000-05:00

Adam Shostack brings attention to three different situations where government computer systems were accessed by hackers, and then concludes by stating that last year none of these incidents would have received much attention. Why? The reason is that we, as a nation, have become extremely security conscious in the past few years.

9/11 was the event that shocked us out of the notion that America is a place that is safe from the terror and unrest that we read about in other parts of the world. The bad things that happen to other people can happen to us, too. As a result, we’ve (not unexpectedly) made every effort to hem ourselves in and protect ourselves on every side. We’ve demanded that the government take steps to protect ourselves from foreign enemies, and political bias aside, I suspect that this desire for security is one of the primary reasons President Bush was elected for a second term.

But we’ve gone a step further. Where before we were primarily concerned with threats outside the United States, we’ve now come to suspect our own neighbors. True, there has always been difference of opinion among ourselves, but never has there been such an emphasis on personal security. We want to do background checks on our teachers, coaches, employees, caregivers, significant others (read up on the True.com background check issue) and so on. Where will it stop?

The current state of information technology exacerbates the security problem as technological progress outpaces the necessary responsibility that would be imposed by ethical guidelines. People have always had the capacity for greed and lawbreaking, and today’s technology simply provides more opportunity for more people to do so.

Then comes along the ChoicePoint fiasco. The computer systems of one of the nation’s largest data brokers is compromised and we’re sent into a second panic. We see that our confidential information is not safe and secure, and we don’t even know who has it or who has access to it. I have no doubt that a number of the individuals affected by this had no idea that their personal information could be sold for legal purposes, much less illegal ones. Now any security breach that results in personal information being stolen or misused catches our attention and reinforces our fear that someone can and will take advantage of us. It’s a very disconcerting thought that someone could steal my identify and that their abuse of what is mine could drastically affect my life and future. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it happen to people a number of times.

So where does this leave us? There are a number of good thinkers out there who probably have some good solutions to propose. However, my initial thoughts are that we need either just and ethical information control or greater transparency in society. Both views have their strength and weaknesses, but those are different discussions. Our country is a different place than it was four years ago, and I’m not sure where, or if this seemingly reckless security craze will end. It's great for background checking companies, but I suspect that personal freedom is in some danger.

Data Brokers and Legislation

2005-03-23T10:33:00.000-05:00

Having just read the back-and-forth discussion between Ryan Singel and Dennis Bailey about the ChoicePoint mess and how legislation should affect data brokers, I think a distinction needs to be made. There are data brokers that sell their databases to third-party employment screening companies, and data brokers who sell their information directly to the companies making the hiring decisions.

In my opinion, the broker that ought to be regulated is the one who provides the information directly to the hiring company. Information that is not obtained, evaluated and reported using strict reporting standards is information that unfairly costs people their jobs and reputations.

Following this, the broker that provides information to a third-party company should not be regulated because the third-party company will be held responsible for its use of the data. Although they contain inaccuracies and are almost never perfectly current, databases still are a valuable source of information. You might be surprised to hear me say this, but I will qualify that statement by saying that they are valuable because they provide leads to additional information that may exist on an individual. The third-party reporting the information needs to verify the information found in the database, but had the database, with all of its inaccuracies, not been available, then important information may never have been found at all.

As an example, an employer may only be aware that a job applicant has lived in a few select places. What the employer does not know is that the applicant committed a crime in a state or county in which he never lived. Due to prohibitive costs, traditional courthouse searches would only cover those counties in which he has lived and would not catch the out-of-state record. A database with a wide scope, however, would possible catch it. The employment screening company knows that the record and disposition of the case might not be accurate and up-to-date, so they send someone to the courthouse to verify the record. It would be found to be either reportable or non-reportable, depending on the most recent information in the courthouse, and the company would have all of the information necessary to make a good decision. The database search was valuable, but the information had to be verified first.

So, access to potentially inaccurate information that is then confirmed or disconfirmed is highly preferable to no information at all. The key is ensuring that the party reporting the final information to the employer complies with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and has strict policies in place to ensure that only verified, accurate information is reported. We want to live in a safe world, but not at the expense of freedom.

The Heart of the Database Problem - ChoicePoint Again

2005-03-23T08:01:00.000-05:00

Wired News posted a story that summarizes the problems with the way ChoicePoint conducts its background checks. A number of individuals in the industry quote the unreliability of background checks based solely on database searches and that are not backed up by physical visits to courthouses. It states that just using database searches, no matter how often the records are updated, is not a substitute for an actual courthouse visit and that companies doing so cannot say that they are complying with the requirement in the Fair Credit Reporting Act that strict procedures must be maintained to ensure the reporting of highly accurate information.

It's good to see this discussion coming out into the open with the media. The industry really lacks standardization and accountability, so hopefully we'll see more of that as the public awareness level rises.

Don't Blame the Background Check

2005-03-22T10:36:00.000-05:00

According to The Houston Star, more employers are making hiring decisions based on the individual’s credit score. A credit report is often a component of a background check, especially if the applicant will be working with finances and making financial decisions for the company.

The article is very biased in favor of “John,” someone who apparently isn’t able to get any kind of job as a result of his bad credit score. He says that he got behind on his bills and ultimately filed for bankruptcy because he had low-paying jobs to begin with, and now he can’t any more low paying jobs, much less better paying ones, because of what potential employers read on his credit report.

Does anything here strike you as being off just a bit?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t help people who are down and out, but let’s not blame the system for a person’s bad decisions. It’s possible to live on very little money if you make the right financial decisions, and if you’re a responsible worker and stick with it eventually you’ll make a little more. You probably won’t make a lot of money in the long run, but you’ll be able to survive.

Maybe John is one of a very small minority of people who had no control over the outcome of their lives, but I have to say I doubt it. There are organizations that exist to help people in his position, but he will still be required to work hard. There is hope for the future, but let’s not blame the system for holding people accountable for the poor decisions they’ve made in the past.

Who Am I, Anyway?

2005-03-21T16:06:00.000-05:00

So I need to make a disclaimer. I am not a lawyer. I am not the owner of a company that does background checks. I simply work in the industry and have exposure to both companies who are hiring people and applicants whose backgrounds are being checked. Given this, I’ve seen that a lot of people have no idea about what some of the issues are surrounding the industry. What do I do? What any normal person would do - I blog about it.

Why am I saying this now? I recently posted a response to a journalist’s article on the ChoicePoint fiasco, not really wanting to get involved but wanting to let her know that she might want to check up on a few things to get more information for her story. She responded and wanted to talk, and foolishly I agreed to speak with her. Foolishly, you say? Yes, because without being a lawyer and without being able to represent a company I can’t really be counted as a quotable source. She understood this as we spoke, but it made me realize that I really need to be careful about what I communicate here and how I present myself. Maybe I need to say something about this at the top of my site.

The purpose of this site is to raise questions about the background checking/employment screening industry and let people know that there might be some issues they need to consider that they might not know about. A lot of what you see here is my personal reflection on what I see going on in the industry. Do not take what I write as unquestionable truth. Be smart and check with your legal counsel before making any important decisions. If something here catches your attention, do some research to verify what you need to know.

I’ll say it again, CHECK WITH YOUR OWN LEGAL COUNSEL before making any real decisions.

Merging Industries - Selection and Screening

2005-03-19T11:20:00.000-05:00

On the other hand, there are companies like DeCotiisErhard, Inc., whose employee selection system effectiveness is mentioned in this article, that develop employee selection tools geared toward measurably reducing turnover (and the high costs associate with high turnover) and increasing customer satisfaction. Doing this kind of development work requires a lot of expertise, and a background checking company would have to leave its core competency in order to do a good job covering that ground. So, why don't companies in these two industries form partnerships? An employer might be attracted by having a system working for them that almost guarantees them good employees in both phases of the new hire process, and each company's involvement ensures quality in both the selection process and the background check.

These industries are both developing, especially background checking, so there is still plenty of room for new ideas and new competitive advantages. Companies that offer background checks are more in demand these days than are companies that provide employee selection systems. I don't know how lucrative it would be for these kinds of companies to partner, but it seems like it would be worth exploring.

What Questions to Ask a Pre-Employment Screening or Background Checking Company

2005-03-18T07:12:00.000-05:00

You know you need to do background checks on your new hires, but it can be a daunting task to sort through the seemingly endless number of companies out there that do background checks. Here are a few questions to ask to help you sort through them. No doubt there are many more questions that you could ask, but these should get you started.

How do you obtain your criminal record information?Do they send an actual person to search the courthouse records, or do they search a database? If they search a database, do they follow up all noted records before they report the results to you? It’s important that all criminal record information they report to you is as accurate and as up to date as possible, and this usually means directly searching county courthouse records. Also, be sure you’re comparing apples to apples when you compare the services provided by different companies. Companies often have different names for the same service, and the same names for different services. You have to ask about the sources of information if you want to be able to make a good comparative decision.

Do you check for criminal records at the county, state and Federal levels?
A decent background checking company will be able to search records at each of these levels.

How do you find out where someone has lived in the past?
Credit reporting companies like http://www.acxiom.com”>Acxiom, a division of http://www.transunion.com”>TransUnion, provide this information based on credit histories. Non-credit reporting companies like National Background Data, also report this information. Be sure that the source reports previous addresses at least seven years back because some only go back three or four years.

How Quickly Are Criminal Search Results Returned?
If the company says they always return them within two days or less, or better yet, instantaneously, look out! They’re probably doing a database search and aren’t following up to verify any records they found, which means they may not be complying with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If this is the case, then you could have problems using the information they provide to make employment decisions.

How do you ensure that the criminal information you provide is free from error and typos?
There should be a process in place in which all information that is reported to the client is double-checked for accuracy. Any time a human is involved there will be errors, and a good company takes this into account and builds their reporting system in such a way that data-entry errors are minimized or eliminated. There isn’t really an excuse for providing inaccurate information to a client, especially when it impacts someone’s job.

What procedure do you have in place to deal with incorrect information you report?
This is an unavoidable problem in the background checking industry. Even if the company reported exactly what was provided to them by the court or any other source, there will still be errors. Court records are far from perfect, which means there needs to be a solution on the back end of things to regulate how inaccuracies are dealt with. If inaccurate information is found to have been reported, the company should have a procedure in place for re-checking the information and, if at all possible, that prevents the same error from occurring again. They obviously can’t guarantee that all court records will be perfect in the future, but if the problem is that the researcher didn’t pull the records correctly then there needs to be a policy in place to address that.

In additional to a consumer report, do you also do investigative reporting?
A typical consumer report as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act attempts to locate records that already exist on an individual. An investigative consumer report, however, involves speaking with people to learn more about the personal characteristics of the person you are investigating. This includes things like speaking with personal references or references from previous employers. The legal language is clearer and more exact, but this is the general gist of it.

How many calls a day do you make to complete a verification of employment?
The company should call at least once a day and, in the case that calls are not returned, should clearly communicate at what point the verification request is closed.

What level of customer service do you provide?
This is very important, especially when you have to meet deadlines or request additional information on something that the company reports. A good company will be able to rush requests when necessary, but be careful not to cry “wolf” too many times or you won’t be taken seriously and may actually receive poorer customer service. If you don’t catch someone on the phone when you call, you should generally expect to receive a return phone call or email within an hour or two.

Picking the right company to do your background checks is important. You want the most accurate results and you want to be covered legally. A lot of companies make great claims about the information they provide, but it can just be a smokescreen. You need to be smart enough to dig a little deeper and be sure you’re comparing apples to apples when companies are telling you about the services they provide. I hope this is helpful. As always, email me (use the link at the bottom of the page) if you have any questions or would like to see an additional post on the subject.

Free Background Checks

2005-03-16T09:21:00.000-05:00

Criminal records are publicly accessible, but that doesn’t mean you can do a free background check. For starters, you’re going to have to know where the person has lived in the past. If you’re trying to check your own criminal history this isn’t a problem, but if you’re checking on a new neighbor, a babysitter, etc., then you probably don’t have easy access to this information. You’ll have to have the cooperation of the person if you want to dig up the dirt on them.

So let’s say you know where this person has lived. Public records in county and municipal courthouses are accessible to the public, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to get to. If the person has lived in another state, you’ll probably have to go to that state and the county in which they lived in order to search the court records. The travel costs will probably be far higher than it would cost to hire a company or private investigator to do the records search.

Companies that provide quick and easy background checks do so by either purchasing or compiling themselves criminal records from courthouses across the country. Yes, there are people who go into a courthouse, type in the letter “A” and start writing away. Talk about a recipe for insanity. They then sell access to this database of criminal records for a fee. However, companies won’t give you access to this information unless you are doing the search for a legitimate reason, related, for example, to employment or a rental application. Do look for secrets in your boyfriend’s past your best bet is to hire a private investigator.

So what do you do if you don’t have money to hire anyone? Well, you’re reading an article on how to do a free background check so this is probably your situation. Here are the steps:

1. Find out where your person has lived, at least in recent years.

2. Say they lived in Cincinnati, OH. Go to Googleand search for “Hamilton County OH Clerk of Courts” to locate the Hamilton County (where Cincinnati is located) Courthouse. This happens to one of relatively few county courts that post their criminal records on their website. It’s a database and as such is updated periodically and is only as accurate as the person data-entering the information, but it’s far better than nothing. If they lived in another county, check to see if that county’s courthouse has a website with records online. If the county does post records online, you’ll probably be able to search for criminal records, civil records and the database of registered sexual offenders in the area.

3. If there are no records available online, try calling the county courthouse directly. Tell the person who answers that you’re trying to see if there are any criminal records on file for someone, and if you’re fortunate the clerk will search while you’re on the phone. It helps if you tell the clerk that you have a good reason for doing the search (for example, you’re thinking about hiring this person to watch your children but you suspect he has a criminal history).

4. If no records can be released over the phone and there is no online access, both of which are often the case, your only recourse is to hoof it over to the courthouse yourself and search the records manually. This is how most courthouses still operate, and is the method that returns the most accurate results. If you’re an employer hiring a company to do a background check for you, this is what you want them to be doing.

So, you can do a low cost or free background check locally if you’re willing to do a little legwork, but for a thorough, comprehensive background check your best option is to hire a reputable company or private investigator. As is usually the case, you get what you pay for.

How To Do a Background Check

2005-03-15T12:04:00.000-05:00

The first thing to determine is your reason for doing a background check. Are you just trying to cover your behind legally in case one of your employees goes and does something crazy, or is it a serious component of your new-hire application process that is used to weed out sub-par applicants?

Most companies probably say that they do them for both reasons, but the truth comes out when the decision starts to affect the checkbook. A barebones background check costs much less than a thorough, investigative background check.

A basic background check probably just includes some kind of search for criminal records. If you’re really cheap you can just do some kind of database search, but I wouldn’t count on that to save you in a heated legal battle. A simple but decent criminal record search would use some kind of locator service to find out where a person has lived in the past and would then check with the individual county courts in each of those counties.

If you want to be more thorough (i.e., spend more money) with your background check, you can add several components to the do the criminal record search mentioned above. You can add counties to a county criminal record search, as well as different jurisdictions. Many states have a collection of the more serious offenses from the entire state, and there are records searches available for federal criminal records, by district, as well. There are all kinds of criminal records searches available, but these are the basics.

In addition to criminal record searches, you probably want to verify information that your applicant has provided to you. This means verifying things like education and degrees received, previous employment and even things like licenses or certifications. On top of this, you could also speak with personal references and employment references. However, be warned that many employers have a policy that prohibits the release of anything beyond dates of employment and title.

So now that you have the information, what do you do? If you’re going to hire the person, just stuff it away in the personnel file. However, if you saw something on the consumer report (yes, it’s called a consumer report even though it doesn’t have anything to do with reviewing a consumer product) that turns you off and you decide not to hire this person, be sure you follow the adverse action guidelines in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Not doing this could result in serious legal consequences.

Happy hiring!

Park Volunteers Refuse Background Check

2005-03-13T15:15:00.000-05:00

A new requirement for Chicago park volunteers makes a background check and refusing to talk to the media mandatory for anyone who wants to volunteer their time to spread mulch and trim branches. Gary Wisby and Andrew Herrmann, Staff Reporters for the Chicago Sun Times, report the story in this article. The media ban would be removed as long as volunteers don't try to represent the Park District, but the background checks requirement will stay for any volunteers who will come into contact with children.

I will say one thing: read 1984.

How far is too far? Nobody will argue against the importance of protecting our children from phyiscal danger. However, where is the line? Are we as a society going to get to the point where no one who has been convicted of any form of violent criminal activity can set foot on public property? I can understand doing a background check on employees, but I think that doing a background check on a volunteer who is working in a public park is going a little too far. As much as we want to deny it, we aren't going to make the world completely safe. As long as there are people in it, there will be danger because every one of us is very capable of hurting other. In fact, I would say that just about everyone in the world has hurt someone else one way or another, even if it wasn't criminally. If we try to remove all of the danger, we also remove freedom and access to the things that make life worth living. Again, read 1984.

Finally, I wonder where the voices of these people are when it comes to and on television? We want to keep violent and ual offenders away from us and our families, but we'll let our children take this stuff in every day on television. Don't we realize that we are influenced by what we take in? We need to wake up and treat the root of the problem and not just the symptoms.

Merging Industries - Selection and Screening

2005-03-10T12:23:00.000-05:00

There are two sides to hiring a new employee. One is to determine if the applicant is a good fit for the company and position, and the other is to determine if there is anything in the potential employee’s background that would disqualify him or her from employment. There are all kinds of companies that offer background check services, and there are a number of companies that offer tests and screening services for potential employees. I don’t, however, know of any companies that do both sides well. The key word here is well. Some employment screening companies offer some pretty basic services to determine new employee “fit,” but they aren’t very comprehensive or involved and don’t carry many guarantees.

On the other hand, there are companies like DecotiisErhard, Inc., that develop employee selection tools geared toward measurably reducing turnover (and the high costs associate with high turnover) and increasing customer satisfaction. Doing this kind of development work requires a lot of expertise, and a background checking company would have to leave its core competency in order to do a good job covering that ground. So, why don’t companies in these two industries form partnerships? An employer might be attracted by having a system working for them that almost guarantees them good employees in both phases of the new hire process, and each company’s involvement ensures quality in both the selection process and the background check.

These industries are both developing, especially background checking, so there is still plenty of room for new ideas and new competitive advantages. Companies that offer background checks are more in demand these days than are companies that provide employee selection systems. I don’t know how lucrative it would be for these kinds of companies to partner, but it seems like it would be worth exploring.

Drug Testing on the Decline

2005-03-08T13:12:00.000-05:00

Do you drug test? The Arizona Republic recently published an article that states that drug testing was done in 2004 by only 62% of employers as a background check component, versus a high of 81% in 1996. Reasons cited are the costs associated with drug testing as well as problems dealing with the legal ramifications of positive drug tests. The article also talks about the rise of drug testing popularity in the 1990’s. I would be curious to see the actual results of the study in order to find out which industries are doing less drug testing and which haven’t changed much. If I had to guess, I would say that a lot of blue collar employers still do drug testing and that the white collar employers are the ones tapering off. It’s a no-brainer that if you have an employee operating heavy machinery around other people and product then you don’t want him to come to work stoned. However, if the employee is an accountant or stockbroker, working under the influence isn’t as much a safety hazard. He might make some mistakes with figures that cost the company some money, but being a little clumsy and mentally slow probably won’t put anyone in great physical danger. Don’t quote me on this.

It sounds to me like drug testing is like a lot of fads. It was a great idea, and many employers jumped on the bandwagon in order to look good in the public eye. But when the economy changed and there was less money around for extras, drug testing started being looked at with a more critical eye. There will probably always be employers who do some form of drug testing due to the nature of their industries, but now that the craze is over employers in industries where its value is somewhat questionable might decide to spend their money elsewhere. A background check might be good enough without it.

Convicted Criminals Get a Second Chance

2005-03-04T06:51:00.000-05:00

An article recently published notes that in 15 states, non-violent felony or misdemeanor convictions can be expunged by the report. They'll still be available to government agencies and select public institutions, but for more employers they won't be seen. The criminal has to be on good behavior for a period of time, sometimes for as little as three years, and can then apply to have the record expunged. This presents a challenge to employers in those states. Someone could be hire who is believed to have a clear criminal record, but is in actuality someone who has fairly recently been in jail for embezzlement or some other non-violent crime. Sure, they might not physically attack anyone in the company, but what about theft of company property or funds?

This brings up what I think is an interesting issue: Is there a place for a second chance? I imagine the procedure mentioned above has at its heart the idea that people ought to be given room to change. People do change - I've heard many stories. However, the article mentioned above states that the nationwide number of people who get out of prison and return within three years is about 50%. No doubt the number is higher when the number of years considered is more than three. But even so, in my opinion that's a lot of people who have changed and can probably handle becoming part of normal life again and working a decent job. I tend to think that unless there is a clear indication that an individual will soon commit another crime, he or she ought to be given a second chance at life. Maybe I'm soft, but I know that those of us who have never committed a crime have still done plenty of things wrong. As a society we are very good at dealing harshly with the faults of others, and dealing very lightly with our own.

Of course, there is the fact that companies have to consider the legal implications of potentially hiring someone with an expunged, non-violent criminal record. There are two sides, one of which says that the company can be held responsible, even if the record was expunged, and another that says that the company cannot be held responsible for something it didn't know about. The second view is obviously the most logical at face value, but in the event of a large corporate scandal involving an employee whose felony record has been expunged I wouldn't be confident saying that the company would emerge unscathed.

What Makes Up a Background Check?

2005-03-03T12:09:00.000-05:00

What comes to mind when you hear the words “background check”? If you’re like many people, the word “background check” is something you’ve heard a lot recently but seldom heard defined. Some companies do very extensive background checks because they are very concerned about safety and security in their work environment, and others do minimal background checks in order to spend the least amount of money and still meet what they deem to be legally sufficient. So what makes up a background check? I can’t provide legal advice, and each company’s requirements are different, but here are some of the key components:

Criminal – This is what most people think of when they hear “background check,” and it’s certainly a piece that shouldn’t be left out. Criminal searches fall into three general categories: those ran by government agencies, public records searches done in courthouses and searches of databases that are compiled from both public and private sources. Government searches are only available to government agencies (duh) and a very select group of private and non-profit organizations – generally those that work with children or the elderly. Of the remaining two, the most accurate and up to date are criminal records searches performed by actually sending someone to the courthouse to search for records. The drawback is that you have to know where the person has lived, and you often won’t find criminal records that are located in counties in which the person has never resided. There are services available, many of them credit-based, which provide former addresses of residency. Database searches, on the other hand, usually cover a much wider territory. Their drawbacks are that the information contained in them often contains errors and isn’t up to date. A database search can give you a lot more territory coverage, but because of their weaknesses it is a good idea to follow up any noted criminal records with a trip to the appropriate courthouse.

I should also mention that a number of states offer criminal searches to private companies. If you live in one of these states and determine that the information the state provides is accurate, then it might be a good option. If you hire people that live in different states you might have a problem doing background checks consistently on all applicants since not all states offer this kind of check.

Driving Records – Employers who employ drivers usually want to check to make sure that their applicants have valid licenses and that their past driving records meets the company’s requirements.

Drug Testing – Some employers require drug testing before hiring an applicant, some require them after on-the-job accidents, some do random drug testing, and some do all three. The kind and frequency of drug testing is often determined by the industry the company is in and the standards or laws imposed on it.

Verify Social Security Number – You can’t actually confirm that a SSN matches a name through the Social Security Administration until after the applicant is hired (makes sense for SSN security, but not for hiring!), but you can check it to make sure it is a valid number and to find out when and where it was issued.

Verify Employment – Make sure that the person actually worked where they said they worked for a given amount of time, and did what they said they did. Sometimes you can get more information out of a company, especially if you supply a release form signed by the applicant, but the basics you can always get are dates and title. More and more companies are afraid of being sued these days.

Verify Licensure – Verify that an applicant has a license (RN, technical license, etc.).

Check References – Find out more information about the applicant’s personal characteristics. Note that you are calling references that the applicant supplied, so they’ll probably be biased. Make sure good questions are asked.

Verify Education – Find out if the applicant graduated from the school he said or she he graduated from, and that he received the degree(s) he or she says were received.

These are the basics of background checks. Almost every employment screening company offers these checks and most will also offer plenty of variations on these checks. It can get tricky because although they do many of the same things, employment screening companies call them by different names. Be smart.

Check Yourself

2005-03-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

Employers are interested in doing background checks on new hires, but it is becoming increasingly popular for people to do background checks on themselves, either to find out what someone else might turn up or to "pre-qualify" for a job. Last year Choicepoint started offering a "Background Check in a Box" to small business owners at Sam's Club, discussed in this article, and Entersect recently one-upped them by offering job seekers the chance to do their own background check on CareerBuilder.com.

My concern is this: Considering how difficult it is for an employment screening company to get other companies to understand the ins and outs of doing background checks properly (which typically includes proving to them that database searches are not the best way to get accurate background information), how difficult is it going to be to communicate this to the average job seeker who doesn't have the benefit of a legal department to assist him or her. What will the response be when he or she conducts a background check via a database search, and then the potential employer conducts a background check by going to the courts and searching actual court records and finds something that disqualifies the individual from a job? There will no doubt be legal disclaimers that the job seeker agrees to before doing his or her own background check, but it seems to me that this new opportunity has the potential to negatively impact the overall perception of the employment screening industry. What we need now are more consistent standards that lead to higher quality information and consumer trust, not more variables without regulation. I see offering personal background checks as a big part of the future of employment screening, but I'm concerned that we've put the cart before the "standards" horse.

Choicepoint in the Global Spotlight

2005-03-01T09:53:00.000-05:00

New Zealand's The National Business Review posted an article on the mess that Choicepoint is currently in. The article points out the fact that it was Choicepoint’s blunder, not the determination of a skilled hacker, that led to hundreds of thousands of individuals’ personal information being stolen. On top of this, Choicepoint is also slammed for additional lawsuits related to incorrect information that have been filed within the past several years.

Choicepoint is a giant in the employment screening industry, and there is no doubt that this incident will be a hard blow to the company. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that any aspiring company in this industry needs to develop and execute processes that are designed to both guarantee the reporting of high quality information and also to be proof of due diligence in its business practices should legal. Process, process, process. It’s a pain to be doing all the time, but these days, and especially in an industry as sensitive as employment screening, it’s corporate suicide not to do it. The legal proceedings haven’t been wrapped up yet for Choicepoint, but I expect that they won’t emerge unscarred.

Dating a Felon

2005-02-24T12:23:00.000-05:00

Yes, background checking’s sphere of influence is growing. Mr. or Ms. Perfect may not be as perfect as they appear to be, and while this has been a well-known fact in the human resources and personnel management industry, an article recently published in the Oakland Tribune shows that background checking is already a prerequisite for one online dating community, and will likely soon be for others as well. Herb Vest, the Chief Executive and found of True.com is pushing for legislation that will require all online dating services to do a background check on its members.

Of course, this does make a great deal of sense. If you’re going to go on a relatively blind date with someone, alone, wouldn’t you want to know if that person has a criminal history, especially violent or sexually related charges?

I wonder what kind of legal issues will come out of this. The Fair Credit Reporting Act governs the reporting of criminal activity for employment purposes, but as far as I know there are no laws that state you may not decline to date someone based on anything in their consumer report. If someone loses a date because of incorrect information in his or her consumer report, what will the recourse or compensation be? Force the person who rejected him or her in the first place to go on a date? Put a monetary amount on the value of the potential future these two individuals could have had? Will the person who did the rejecting also be able to claim damages for the loss of the potential relationship since the decision was based on inaccurate information? This sounds like a mess to me, but with the speed at which we’re moving as a society toward increased safety and security, I can’t see how it’s going to be avoided.

Holes

2005-02-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

No pre-employment background check is without shortcomings. For example, if you commit a crime, especially if it’s misdemeanor (which, by the way, still encompasses a number of serious charges like theft, assault, trespassing, etc.), in a state or even county in which you’ve never lived, it’s very likely that a background check will not find the record. Most background checks are conducted based either on addresses listed on the applicant’s application form, or on a search through a company that collects addresses and then sells them to employment screening companies. If you haven’t lived in a certain county or state, it will likely not be searched. The most thorough background checks are done at the county level – the more focused you get, the smaller the scope of the search. Unless you commit a more serious crime, probably felony level, a search that covers a broader area probably won’t find it. Courts don’t communicate all that well with each other…yet. On top of that, many employers don’t even conduct a search beyond the county level.

My point here is not that companies shouldn’t do background checks. Just don’t do a background check and expect it to always be perfect. You won’t find out everything there is to know about your applicant. Court records systems are getting better, but they still have a long way to go.

Standards?

2005-01-27T13:22:00.000-05:00

So the standard amount of time in which criminal records can be reported is seven years, right? Where did this come from, and why do we think we can communicate this as fact to prospective clients when there are all kinds of government agencies who do not subscribe to this “standard.” I don’t know why 7 years for criminal searches was adopted, but I can speak to the government issue. Employment screening is largely a private industry and private industry, at least in the short run, is left to itself to deal with the inconsistencies of government. Standards obviously have to be adopted or else employers would face all kinds of lawsuits over inconsistent hiring practices, so this means that people who do employment screening have to do their best to deal with the government systems. Some only have searchable records for the past 5 years. I was looking for a record from the 80’s in the Hamilton County, OH courthouse a while ago and was directed to the archives section of the courthouse. I found my way to the dungeon, located the appropriate section and saw that for year 198X there were maybe 50 records on file. Perhaps it was Cincinnati’s golden year and people at that time lived in crime-free bliss, but the pessimist in me tends to think it was just poor record-keeping. Unfortunately this happens all the time and in courthouses all over the country.

And don’t forget motor vehicle record searches. Some states, like Pennsylvania, only go back 3 years, while other states, like Massachusetts, will report every violation a person has had since the license was first issue. Does this mean that the industry has to adopt 3 years as the standard since it’s the lowest common denominator, or does it mean that if the industry adopts 5 years as the standard then employers who get motor vehicle records from Pennsylvania get a bum deal? I don’t know if there’s a standard for motor vehicle record reporting. The best attempt at communicating standards I’ve seen is a sheet that lists all of the states and their individual reporting guidelines. Not much of a standard.

The State of Drug Testing

2005-01-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

Drug testing is messy business, and I’m not just talking about spilling the specimen collection cup. While most of the services performed by companies in the employment screening industry only require the client to submit an individual’s information to the employment screening company, a drug test usually requires the individual to take a form with him to the collection location. This presents a few problems. First, the individual has the primary responsibility for getting the service done. If he or she is applying for a job then there is a good source of motivation, and if the test isn’t taken within a given amount of time then the person can be removed from consideration. However, if it’s a random drug test or a post-accident drug test it can get a little messier. There is always the threat of losing the job, but unless the individual is a horrible employee this is the last thing the employer wants to do. If the person is fired for not complying with the company’s drug testing policy just because he or she is a procrastinator, then the company has to recruit, hire and train a new employee and do all of the paperwork that accompanies this process. It’s not cheap and takes some time. Sure, there are other kinds of background checks that the applicant can occasionally delay, but in my experience drug testing has by far the most applicant/employee caused delays.

So what can be done about it? Are there any solutions on the horizon? There are the self-test options, but most employers prefer to do drug testing using a recognized, professional lab. Another option is to do on-site drug testing, but unless you’re at a large location and need to test a lot of people at once, the cost per test can be very expensive. If you don’t fit into this category, and not many companies do, then you’re stuck with a high level of applicant/employee dependency. Why don’t the big players in the industry tackle this one? If either Quest or Labcorp, who have a network of specimen collection and testing locations all over the country, were to find a solution wouldn’t they leave their competition far behind?

Because of the costs involved I don’t see a way around having to send individuals to a collection location, but what about eliminating the form? This would at least make random and post-accident testing much easier because the employee could go straight to the clinic without having to first swing by the office to pick up a form. Additionally, prospective employees from out-of-state would be able to test right away without having to first wait for a form to be shipped in the mail. If a company has an account set up with Quest or Labcorp, why can’t they send people to take tests without a form? The collection locations could be outfitted with a means to produce documentation of the test, and the individual could simply provide a one-time-use code given to him or her by the company to confirm that he or she is authorized to take a drug test.

Employment-related drug testing is in increasing demand as employers become more safety and security conscious. There is a lot of room for process improvement in this industry, which means there is also potential for significant profit for the company that can make serious advancements.

High Maintenance Clients

2005-01-27T12:51:00.000-05:00

How much time is too much time to spend on client requests? We provide a set number of services, and each of those services has a documented process that is followed every time. If something goes wrong with the service, there is another documented process that details the steps that are to be followed to deal with the problem. Once a person understands how the processes work, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to get the work done.

So if everything is documented and handled the same way, why do clients ever get the idea that they can make special requests that are to be carried out outside the process, and why do they get upset if those requests aren’t followed? There are a few reasons that come to mind immediately:

One – The client has worked with other companies in the past that have met all of their special requests, and they say that if you don’t meet their request then they’ll find someone who will. This is the heart of competition.

Two – It wasn’t made clear to the client at the beginning of the relationship what the processes are and where the boundaries are. There is almost always some tension between sales and operations, and when sales gets too interested in pleasing the customer at any price, life in operations can become a nightmare.

Three – The processes that are in place aren’t consistently followed. This is the same thing that happens when a child’s rules aren’t consistently enforced. If you tell him that he can’t play in the street, but an hour later say nothing when he ventures into the street an hour later, he will immediately recognize the inconsistency. Similarly, the client will not hesitate to ask you to do extraordinary things for them (whether or not they realize how extraordinary the request is) if they don’t know what you can or cannot realistically do. You don’t want to offend the client by constantly putting up walls when they ask for something, but clear communication about what the requests involve is essential.

Four – The client has a lot of weight to throw around. If you’re working for a million-dollar company, they’re used to getting what they want and getting it right away. They don’t care what your internal standards are. Childish? Yes, but that’s the way it happens.

You don’t want to offend the client by constantly putting up walls when they ask for something, but clear communication about what the requests involve is essential. What it comes down to is a basic cost versus quality question. How much money do you want to spend and how many people do you want to employ in order to be able to effectively meet every client request? There’s a tradeoff here, and I think that the successful company is the one that can occasionally bend a few rules and communicate effectively with the client about what can and cannot be done. The client has to know that you have their best interests in mind, and that if you say you can’t do something it’s because you don’t want to sacrifice the quality work you’re already doing for them.