I was having lunch today with my friend, Dana Borowka of Lighthouse Consulting Services. Lighthouse provides psychological and assessment testing to myriad businesses around the country. Dana was telling me how he was recently giving a talk before 150 Human Resource Directors, discussing candidate assessment and background checks.
He asked how many of the Human Resource Directors actually speak with their background checking service. He asked how many of them raise questions about different searches and follow up when there are “hits,” or when records show. Only a smattering of directors raised their hands.
I found this telling. While Corra is accessible, many background checking companies discourage accessibility. It is sometimes difficult to follow up on searches and dig deeper into you employment candidate’s criminal, credit, education and employment history. And, believe me, sometimes assiduous follow up is necessary.
There are cases when your candidate has only a misdemeanor listed in his criminal background history. But that misdemeanor could have started out as a felony, and because it was domestic abuse or whatever the reason, it was plea bargained down to a misdemeanor. The fact that it is only a misdemeanor might comply with your hiring threshold. However, the fact that this candidate may be capable of a lot more violent displays than what qualifies as a misdemeanor may be of critical concern to your company. You are concerned with the severity of the violence your candidate is bringing to the work place and not just the final disposition of his case.
The last thing you need is for some worker to snap out and hurt someone in your work place. You have to consider your legal liability, the public embarrassment, and, worse, you have to deal with the fact you let someone in who hurt seriously one of your workers.
Conversely, you may reject candidates with misdemeanors, but the charges may have either been expunged or may have been reduced to, say, a ticket. Usually the answer is pretty apparent, but not all the time. Again, you can be liable if you reject a candidate on grounds of his criminal history, only to find in the end there was no criminal history.
We saw a case recently where a school teacher wasn’t about to find a job. He was rejected everywhere. He couldn’t figure out why. He was just a school teacher, special education, no less. He thought maybe he was getting back employment reviews. He hired an attorney, a client of ours.
We conducted the employment verifications on his behalf. We ran his Nationwide Criminal Database Search. Sure enough, there it was. He had the same name and date of birth as another, who as an habitual criminal and who lived in an adjoining state. But their middle names were different. Seven applications at seven schools and, presumably, seven different background checking companies. Nobody had looked for distinguishing characteristics.
If you think this doesn’t happen often, then think again. You should be able to discuss these issues with your background checking service. They should be willing to follow up and go the extra mile. They should be willing to provide country criminal court certification, proving your candidate is innocent or guilty. If they aren’t willing to go the distance for you, then should maybe start to look around for another service.
Check them out before you hire.
