SAT scores, transcript, background check
I’ve got a nephew who’s going to college with the help of several scholarships. Those scholarships are contingent on good behavior. If he gets arrested for something like underage drinking, for example, his scholarships can be pulled. Many colleges have similar policies.
Now some college administrators are thinking about criminal background checks as part of the admissions process. KHTV in Little Rock, Arkansas, reports that “What you do as a kid could soon determine your future. Because of violent incidents, like the Virginia Tech shootings, some colleges and universities are considering adding background checks to the admission process. And even non-criminal offenses may come up in determining scholarship awards.”
Today many colleges ask applicants about past misbehavior. It’s all on the honor system, though because nobody checks what the applicants tell them.
Most of the people applying to college out of high school are sixteen or seventeen years old. In most states, according to Traci Truly in her Legal Guide for Teens, the age at which you are tried as an adult is either seventeen or eighteen. Whatever legal troubles most applicants have had was handled under the juvenile justice system and the records are likely to be sealed.
But before you let your teen breathe a sigh of relief, consider this. If the background check turns up the fact of a juvenile record, the college can ask for details as a condition of continuing the application or scholarship award process. The college can also make lying on the application for admission or […]
Thinking about using Facebook or MySpace for background checks?
The SmartMoney web site has lots of good advice for job seekers. But in an article titled “Facebook Profiles Can Foil Job Searches” I found some good advice for employers, especially those considering using the social networking sites for part of background check on younger applicants.
Jeanine DeBacker, an employment lawyer with Wendel Rosen Black & Dean in Oakland, Calif., says she often cautions her clients — employers and their human-resource managers concerned about the legality of conducting online background screenings of potential employees — ‘to remember that people coming into the work force don’t always know the proper way to behave. That’s not new.’ The difference now is that youthful (and sometimes not-so-youthful) indiscretions are made permanent in cyberspace for all to see.
That’s good advice, since more and more employers are at least considering using the social networking sites as part of their screening process. CareerBuilder.com surveyed more than 1,150 hiring managers in 2006. Twenty-five percent used search engines to screen applicants. Ten percent used social networking sites. I’m sure those figures are higher today.
Remember this. Kids have acted stupidly throughout the ages. I know I contributed to that great tradition. You’re going to reduce your potential talent pool to zero if you take every stupid act by a young person as evidence of a character flaw.
Social networking sites and web searches should be part of your process. Just remember that the information on them is not always reliable. Other information on those sites may be accurate but not […]
Sometimes all you can do is chuckle: John Mark Karr
Fox News reports that John Mark Karr is serious about proving that he has no convictions in Alabama, where he asked for a background check from the Birmingham Police Department. It seems like only yesterday, but it was actually a year ago that John Mark Carr was all over the news.
You may recall that he confessed to killing little JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colorado ten years before. Since Karr was in Thailand at the time, the confession got him a flight home at US expense and we got to see pictures of him sipping a cool drink during the flight. The flight took him to Los Angeles and another took him to Boulder while we all waited to find out what would happen next.
What happened next was nothing. The authorities determined that he made up his confession. They let him go. And, for the most part, he disappeared from media radar.
Then, in early December, Karr wandered into the Birmingham Police station and asked for a document showing that he had no criminal convictions in Alabama. Karr said he needed the background check as part of a job search in Georgia.
Like Karr’s previous escapades, this one left me shaking my head. What employer in his right mind would accept a document from an applicant attesting to his purity?
What employer would rely on a background check that only covered the state of Alabama, especially if the employer was in Georgia?
And is there an employer anywhere in the developed world that […]
Even the police chief should follow the rules
Poulan, GA is a very small town just to the east of Albany, where the chief of police is in trouble over a background check. The Albany Herald, in a story headlined: “Poulan police chief suspended,” reports the following.
Poulan’s top police official has been suspended after officials say she may have used her power as police chief to snoop on a City Council member. Angie Schlosser has been suspended with pay pending a full investigation into an alleged incident where she ran a background check on Councilman Van Jones, Poulan City Attorney Tommy Coleman said.
I’m sure there are some juicy local political conflicts that play a part in all of this, but there’s also an important point. The point is that background and credit checks are powerful tools to help you hire and promote employees, keep your workforce safe and select tenants wisely, but just like with any powerful tool, you have to use them correctly.
So here are some do’s and don’ts.
Do use criminal background and credit checks as a tool to help you screen out the criminal and the dangerous elements in your applicant pool.
Do use credit checks to cross-verify information and dates on resumes and applications.
Do use all background checking tools in accordance with the law and for legitimate business purposes.
Don’t use these tools for fun, for gossip or for any other purpose that you couldn’t justify to other people in an adversarial setting, like a court.
Are pre-employment credit checks discriminatory?
Sometimes you hear people complain about the use of pre-employment credit checks as part of the hiring process. They say, “My bad credit shouldn’t be an issue in whether I can do the job. I’m being discriminated against.” Are they right?
Kansas City Star business columnist Diane Stafford takes up that issue in her recent column titled: Credit checks a legal part of pre-employment investigations Her bottom line is that “credit checks are a legal and in some cases appropriate part of pre-employment investigations. And there’s only a glimmer of a chance that credit checks might be considered discriminatory.”
In most cases, you won’t decide not to hire a person based on their credit history per se. You’ll make the decision based on fitness for a particular job or because the credit check points to other issues.
Obviously a person’s credit history has a greater bearing on your decision to hire for specific positions. You’ll pay more attention to it in cases where people will have access to money or where judgment is a factor. You’ll pay less attention if you’re hiring a receptionist.
But in both cases, you want to use the credit history as an indicator of areas to check further, not as a simple black and white hiring choice. Some reasons for doing a pre-employment credit check have nothing to do with credit.
The information on a pre-employment credit check gives you an independent source of information on the job history that you can compare with what’s on a resume or […]
What are you missing?
According to a recent study conducted by J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc., “55% of 161 HR professionals surveyed said they have discovered outright lies on resumes or applications when conducting pre-employment background or reference checks.”
Even though this is a small sample, the numbers look similar to other studies I’ve seen about the amount of bad information on resumes and applications. But the authors of this study make another important point.
Edwin Zalewski, a human resources subject matter expert with J. J. Keller & Associates believes that the 55 percent figure might just be the tip of the iceberg. He points out that 24 percent of the HR professionals his firm polled didn’t do background checks at all. They have no clue if they’re being lied to or not.
This is definitely not a case where ignorance is bliss. One important reason for doing a criminal background check on everyone you hire is to avoid exposure to a charge of negligent hiring.
Negligent hiring works this way. If you don’t exercise “reasonable care” in the hiring process, you can be held liable if someone you hire harms others, physically or otherwise.
Here’s something else to think about. The courts can hold you liable for negligent hiring if you “should have known” about the risk a person you hire might pose to others. In other words, it’s up to you to check the person’s application and background and use due diligence in your process. Not checking is a real risk.