More companies using outside services for background checks
A survey by a Connecticut-based strategic planning consulting firm found that more big companies are using outside services for criminal background checks and pre-employment credit checks than ever before. The firm surveyed companies in Connecticut and New York about their recruiting practices. Here’s what they found.
Of the 73 organizations in Fairfield County and the metropolitan New York area that participated, more than 65 percent use an outside source to conduct formal background checks.
My take is that this is part of a big and important trend. More and more businesses are realizing how important it is to hire people who can do the job, work well with others, fit in with the culture and not embarrass the company later.
It used to be that we could hire people from a pool where someone we knew also knew an applicant. We could ask a trusted source whether the prospective new hire had good character and a good work ethic.
Those days are gone. Now we hire from all over. Resumes and applications come in over the net from people we may never see until it’s time for the interview.
Checking references has changed, too. It used to be that we could call up a prior employer or college professor and ask about an applicant. In the old days, they’d tell us what they thought.
Those days are gone. Today most companies will verify the dates of employment and very little else. They’re afraid of lawsuits.
So, like those companies the consulting firm surveyed, more of us […]
Dallas schools cracking down
The Dallas Morning News reports on a Dallas Independent School District (DISD) operation to deal with employees with a criminal past. Here’s the lead paragraph.
The Dallas Independent School District has fired, or forced to resign, 24 employees since November for failing to notify the district of arrests or court judgments for serious crimes, including indecent exposure, theft and felony assault, according to information received from DISD. The employees include nine teachers and a teacher’s assistant. DISD also has reported at least 141 educators to the Texas Education Agency for having a criminal background or for running afoul of district rules.
The firings came about because a Dallas Morning News investigation last year. The paper found that the DISD was in violation of several laws and administrative procedures involving the hiring of employees and the reporting of criminal histories to the Texas Education Agency.
Like many stories we’ve seen lately, the problem wasn’t having a rule or a law in place. The problem was following the rules in a timely way. In Dallas, for example, criminal background checks are supposed to be part of the hiring process. Background checks are also supposed to be run annually.
Those checks are supposed to support another rule which “requires that employees who are arrested or convicted or who receive deferred adjudication for any felony or any offense involving moral turpitude report the crime in writing to the superintendent within three workdays.”
Some employees claimed that they didn’t follow the policy because they didn’t know about it. […]
But they already did a background check!
According to the Akron Beacon Journal, officials at the Scioto Youth Camp in Perry County, Ohio and Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, Ohio are pointing fingers at each other over a volunteer camp counselor accused of inappropriately touching three young boys at a church camp.
The camp officials say that they didn’t do a background check on Timothy Stephen Keil because “his church, Fairfield Christian Church, told them Keil had already passed a background check there to become a Sunday school volunteer.” The people at the camp didn’t think a second background check was needed.
Meanwhile church officials said they ran a background check, but couldn’t locate it in their files. When they asked the company that runs their background checks to review their records, it turned out that no one ran a background check on Keil.
Keil is now accused of molesting three young boys at the camp. He was previously convicted in Pennsylvania on the charge of corruption of a minor.
There’s a real simple lesson here. Do your own background checks. Nobody else’s background check is your background check. Only your background check is your background check.
Avoiding lawsuits
Business Journals around the country are running an article titled “Avoiding litigation that will keep you awake at night.” You can read the whole article here in the South Florida Business Journal if you have a business journal subscription. In case you don’t here are some key points:
If there’s a bully working for you, you can’t sit by and let him or her run roughshod over others. You need to confront the employee, point out the bad behavior and the consequences if it continues. Then deliver the consequences if behavior doesn’t change.
The article covers several issues like abuses of leave, where the lesson is essentially the same. When you’re confronted with bad behavior, you have to deal with it. It’s your job as the boss.
What about preventing bad behavior? The article offers two clear pieces of advice. Here’s one: “Conducting a thorough background check on new hires can save a lot of hassle in the long run.” If you’ve got an applicant who is likely to create problems for you, an effective hiring process, including a background check, can help you avoid a hiring mistake.
The other bit of advice is to make your expectations clear. The people who work for you need to know what your policies are. They need to know what you expect and what you forbid.
Tell new people when they’re hired. Review key policies with everyone regularly.
Take away these three rules to help you avoid lawsuits.
- Hire carefully and well, using reference and background checks.
- Tell people who […]
Trust in God, but do your background checks
I’m a preacher’s kid so the workings of churches have a special fascination for me. That’s how I happened to be reading an article about New Life Church in Colorado Springs and their search for a new pastor.
They’ve been hunting for a pastor since their founding pastor, Ted Haggard, was fired in November after admitting to an affair with a male prostitute that included drug use. That story was covered by all the major news outlets because Haggard had been a vocal advocate of “family values.”
As I was reading the article, one sentence jumped out at me. “Ware told the crowd that he was impressed by Boyd’s integrity and especially by two of his responses during the detailed selection process that included background checks.”
Background checks for pastors? Wow. I guess the world has changed a lot since I was a kid.
A background check wouldn’t have prevented the church’s problems with Mr. Haggard. Although prostitution is illegal in most states, and drug use certainly is, the behavior that got him in trouble happened after he was already in a position of trust.
Still, if you’re a church, you want to do everything you can to avoid the kind of embarrassment and anguish that New Life Church went through. And if you’re not a church, you still want to do everything you can to make sure that no one you hire winds up on the front page of the paper for a bad reason.
Just because it’s your policy doesn’t mean you’re doing it
UCLA is embarrassed. They missed checking a coach with a criminal past:
One day after news broke that wide receivers coach Eric Scott was arrested for burglary and had a lengthy list of prior arrests and convictions, Guerrero said the school would reserve judgment until it gathered all the facts, but he also made it clear that it knew little about Scott’s past.
UCLA isn’t alone. In Alabama, consternation reigns at the Dothan City Schools. Another employee with background check issues:
[Keaton Lamar] Battle, 34, was arrested last Friday in Donalsonville and charged with two counts of enticing a child for immoral purposes. Until May, Battle had worked as a teaching aide at PASS Academy in Dothan. Neither of the alleged incidents happened at PASS, but one happened while Battle was employed there. The Alabama Child Protection Act of 1999 requires anyone working in a job with unsupervised access to children to be fingerprinted and submit to a background check. The city school system also asks potential hires whether they’ve ever been arrested or convicted of a felony or misdemeanor.
The two incidents are different. But they have the same lesson for you.
The UCLA incident is the “Case of the Background Check that Didn’t Get Done.” UCLA has a policy to conduct background checks on fulltime athletics department staff. But no one did a background check on Eric Scott.
The Dothan incident is the “Case of the Background Check that Came Too Late.” In Alabama, the state runs the background check on teachers […]