Good Employees are Worth Screening For
In the May 2007 issue of Dental Economics, there’s an excellent article titled: “Hiring a great team.” In that article, the authors say the following.
“No management function is more critical than the ability to hire qualified and competent people. Dental schools tend not to provide any help in this area. As a result, this all-important task can be – at its best – overwhelming, mysterious, and challenging, and – at its worst – a pure gamble.”
That’s not just true for dental offices. It’s true for most small businesses.
If you run a smaller business, you probably didn’t start your business to master the art of hiring good people. You started it because you wanted to run a retail store that appealed to your passion. Or you liked working in construction and thought that you could do better on your own.
Whatever the case, you’re going to have to hire. If you want to get great people on your team and avoid lawsuits for things like negligent hiring, you need to do it right.
The authors of the Dental Economics article outline good hiring for a dental office. Here’s my version for everyone else.
Have a process. Your process should attract lots of candidates so that you can narrow your search down to the good ones.
Know what you’re looking for. Before you start, make sure you have a clear idea of who your ideal employee will be.
Include different evaluations in your process. The authors of the Dental economics article state that: “Statistically, […]
Screen them all
If you read the Chicago Tribune, you may have caught the article on “Staying festive but secure” about the security measures the bid committee is planning if Chicago is awarded the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
One particular line caught my eye. It’s a quote from Doug Arnot, director of venues/operations for the bid committee. He said: “If you’re selling a hot dog, we run a background check.”
What about you? Are you screening every job applicant? Are you screening every prospective tenant? Why not?
The people planning security for the Olympics know a simple fact. You don’t screen people simply because of the job you may give them or the apartment they may rent. You screen people make sure they don’t get access to the “employees only” parts of your business or to another tenant’s property.
If you’re not doing it already, think about screening them all. There are two ways a “screen everyone” policy will work for you.
First, and most obviously, your screening will catch people with criminal records, bad driving records and an unstable history.
Second, and not so obvious, there is a deterrent effect. Prospective tenants and employees who know you screen everyone are less likely to apply at all. That narrows down your list to a higher percentage of good prospects.
Study: Background screening uncovering more problems with potential hires
How bad is it?
Hiring managers are forever complaining that the quality of candidates simply isn’t what it used to be. When it comes to the information in a criminal background check or driving record check, they just might be right.
Kroll Inc. is a private investigation firm. They also study topics such as background screening, forensic accounting, bodyguard services, corporate restructuring, and technology services. They just released a study of employment screening “hit ratios” for 2006. Hits are nothing more than the percentage of searches in a specific area that turn up something. For example, if you conduct a criminal records search as part of your background investigation of a prospective employee and turn up a criminal conviction, that would be a hit.
Here’s the scary part. Just about every category had more hits in 2006 than the year before.
Hits on criminal records checks increased from 8.5 percent of searches to 9.1 percent. That means that almost ten percent of the people applying to you for a job are likely to have a criminal past.
This varies a bit from industry to industry. Two of the highest hit rates on criminal checks are in construction and retail.
The hit rate is lower in financial services, healthcare, and education. But that’s small comfort since those are industries where hiring a criminal can have the biggest impact.
Checks on driving record searches reveal that almost half of all applicants for constructions jobs have some mark on their driving record. You certainly want […]
A dangerous world
Like many parents, I have followed the story of Madeleine McCann with strong emotions. For the very few of you who are not familiar with the tale, a brief recap: Four year-old Madeleine visited a resort town in Portugal with her parents and one year-old twin siblings. On May 3 her parents went to dinner with friends at a restaurant 100 yards away, from which their apartment was at least partly visible, but they left the children alone. (The resort facility, at Praia de Luz, offers babysitting and day care but the McCanns did not use these options.) The door to the apartment was probably unlocked. Every thirty minutes a parent would come back to check on the children. At 10PM, they discovered that Madeleine was missing from her bed. She is still missing.
The story has received worldwide media attention. Why does it affect us so? As tragic as the story is, dozens of children are lost every day. Part of it, no doubt, has to do with the behavior of the parents. In America at least, deliberately leaving children so young unattended is not generally accepted — in some states it is illegal. But almost everyone leaves a child alone in their own bedroom at night, and what if something were to happen? As a parent, you watch your young ones like a hawk, but somewhere in the back of your mind […]
What is the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program?
In the wake of September 11, the U.S. government has set up a number of customized background check programs to control access to sensitive positions. One of the greatest areas of concern has been container ships, with the fear that dangerous material could be shipped into the United States. In addition to port safety legislation, and concern over foreign ownership of American ports, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) launched a worker credentialing program to help maritime security.
This program, called TWIC, will limit access to port facilities, outer continental shelf facilities, and vessels regulated under the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) as well as all U.S. Coast Guard credentialed merchant mariners. Anyone who goes to these areas will require a TWIC credential. According to the TSA this will affect over 750,000 people, and as such represents a very large background check program. A “tamper-resistant biometric control” will be used, which appears to include fingerprints at a minimum. The rules have not been finalized; the enrollment process, once defined, will be rolled out over 18 months and all U.S. merchant mariners are required to have one by September 25, 2008.
A few items here are relevant for the background check industry as a whole. First, it is possible for a standard criminal history to bar someone from TWIC. A murder conviction will do it, as will some less obvious candidates such as certain incidents involving rape and sexual abuse […]
Data mining to stop crime, or support it?
The New York Times had an interesting pair of articles yesterday about the use of data mining and its effect on criminal justice. The first one described the expansion of business intelligence software beyond its initial role in the retail world. Business intelligence software examines patterns in large amounts of data. For example, this allows Wal-Mart to optimize inventory in each store by taking into account local variations in taste.
In 2005, the police chief in Richmond, Virginia decided to try similar software to predict criminal activity. They analyzed 911 calls, arrests, and other data points. They found that crime increased in Hispanic neighborhoods on payday. The reason? Many residents do not use banking services, making the extra cash a tempting target for thieves. Using analyses like this, the police were able to better deploy their forces in advance of problems, and crime fell 20%.
The second story, entitled “Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist”, showed a darker side. Data mining has found a lucrative home in consumer marketing, allowing advertisers to target their pitches to the people most likely to buy. InfoUSA is an example of a list broker, a company that sells names of people that fit categories such as new moms, motorcycle owners, and so on. They also had some more questionable lists:
InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million […]