Expediency is no excuse
Under the headline, “Officials mandate screening staffers“, Florida Today reports the following.
“Effective today, no employee will be hired by the city without undergoing a criminal background check.” Here’s the background.
On January 15, the City Council of West Melbourne voted to hire Doug Wyckoff to a three-year contract as city attorney for more than $100,000 per year, even though he had not cleared a criminal background check. The majority of the Council probably figured that Wyckoff was an honest looking fellow and there was no need to wait.
Well, you know that if we’re writing about this, that all did not turn out well. When the background check results finally came in, they showed that several different women he’s had relationships with have taken out temporary restraining orders on Mr. Wyckoff. Ooops.
What was the city’s reaction? Well, first, they went ahead and approved an amended contract for Mr. Wyckoff. He says he’s glad to have support of the majority of the Council and he hopes that pesky issue of the restraining orders will die down since it’s “not in the best interests of the city.” Not to mention Mr. Wyckoff’s best interests.
Then the Council passed a resolution to make any hiring for any position in the city contingent on passing a background check. There’s no policy for that so one will have to be drafted. Perhaps the new city attorney can help.
I don’t get it. Didn’t the city ask Mr. Wyckoff if he had a record? If they did ask […]
Red-faced in Florida
Boy, are they red-faced at the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF). That’s the state agency responsible for making sure that children in the care of the state are treated properly. The agency has been in the headlines before for a variety of problems.
Now the Orlando Sentinel reports that “Florida DCF to screen employees’ backgrounds.” What’s involved is a review of the records of all the 13,000 plus agency employees to make sure that every one has been fingerprinted and every one has had a criminal background check.
Why would they do that? The situation is a bit like what happens when a house is burglarized and then the homeowner purchases an alarm system. It takes a crisis to change practice.
This crisis involves the main public spokesperson for the agency. His name is Al Zimmerman and he was the public face of DCF, the person you saw on screen or heard on the radio or saw quoted in the newspaper telling you about the good work that DCF does.
Zimmerman was in those same media on the first of February when he was arrested on eight counts of “using a child in a sexual performance.” The Sentinel reports that, “According to the arrest report, Zimmerman offered two teens money in exchange for photographing them in sexual acts.” One of the teens was in the care of DCF.
The irony is that the background checks that the DCF is instituting wouldn’t have spotted Zimmerman as a potential child porn offender. Despite checking […]
New background check policy
The Parthenon, the student newspaper of Marshall University, reports on the adoption of a background check policy by the University. Here’s the lead.
Employees who apply for jobs at Marshall University or Marshall Community and Technical College must now undergo background checks.
The Board of Governors passed the background check provision, Policy No. HR-14, during its Oct. 16 meeting, marking the first time the university has required background checks campuswide, the policy said.
The story gives us a look at many issues that have to be considered when an organization that hasn’t mandated background checks before makes them a requirement. Let’s consider a few.
The story quotes HR Director Jim Stephens as saying: “We hope, though, that departments have been performing these checks for a while because it’s a sound hiring practice,” It sure is.
In many organizations, some departments do background checks and others don’t. A policy like Marshall’s makes it clear that everyone should do them and makes a lot of excuses irrelevant.
Marshall’s policy applies to all faculty and staff hired on or after November 1. You’ve got to have some kind of effective date. You’ve got to be clear about who’s covered and who’s not covered by the policy.
Current faculty and staff won’t be checked when they apply for new positions. I would prefer to conduct background checks any time there’s a change in function that allows access to sensitive information or to money.
Student workers in general are exempt from the policy. But student workers applying for health and research positions […]
If one background check is good…
The Houston Chronicle recently ran an editorial about background checks for taxi drivers in that city. Here’s the gist.
By April, taxi drivers who wish to pick up or drop off passengers at Bush Intercontinental Airport will have to pass a background check by the Transportation Security Administration. The cabbies, 80 percent of whom came here from African nations such as Ethiopia, Nigeria and Somalia, protest that the background checks are redundant and discriminatory. They are right about the redundancy. Houston taxi drivers must undergo an FBI background check before they receive an operator’s license. If that screening is meaningful, there should be little need for another. Federal security officials say they will use databases to confirm drivers’ immigration status, but that has more to do with immigration policy than airport safety.
I’m with the Chronicle. If you do the job right, there should be no need to keep doing it over while you spend more money and time. You want your background check system to be both effective and cost-effective.
But there are times when you want to run more than one check on the same person. Here are a few of them.
When you’re hiring, run both a criminal background check and a pre-employment credit check. They help you spot different kinds of trouble and their value when used together with a conscientious reference check is greater than the sum of the parts.
Run those same checks when you promote someone to a new position. Think of it as a new […]
Background checks and more in hiring
Advance, a web site for health information professionals, asks: “What’s more expensive than the time and money invested in hiring and training a new employee?” Their answer: “Doing it again, when a new hire exits unexpectedly.”
Then they lay out several strategies, including background checks, for doing a better job of hiring. The article is aimed at people who hire for positions called “medical coders.” If that’s not you, skip the article and read what follows. Here are a few highlights, along with my comments.
“Know exactly what you need.” Far too few companies do this. I’m not taking about the job title or “education requirements.” Think about what the person will actually do and who they will work with. Then draw up a profile of an ideal candidate. Then you can put in the educational or experience requirements that relate directly to the job.
“Weigh references – but not heavily.” I love the phrasing of this recommendation because it should remind you that it’s getting tougher and tougher to get anything except verification of dates of employment out of previous employers.
“Test your applicant’s knowledge.” Don’t just go by the resume or application. Test the applicant’s assertion that he or she can perform a specific task or is familiar with a particular process or software. Use questions about the process or procedures. Use actual performance tests.
“Perform a background check.” The author recommends both a criminal background check and a pre-employment credit check. So do I.
Remember that the people you hire are […]
See the government. See the government move slowly.
Sometimes I wonder what my government does with all the money I send them. I’ve been following the background check process of the Federal Government, hoping that I’d learn something about how to use background checks more effectively. Boy was I looking in the wrong place.
There’s an article in Government Executive about how “by Oct, 27, 2007, federal agencies were supposed to complete background checks for employees with 15 years’ or less experience and begin issuing new identity cards.” Want to guess how many Federal agencies met the deadline?
The answer is none. Zero. Not one. And this was a deadline that was set in 2004!
Now, in business, if nobody could make our deadline, we would assume that the problem was the deadline, not the people. But this is the government we’re talking about.
Not only has the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the ones responsible for the deadline, not acknowledged that the deadline might be a problem, they haven’t changed anything about the background check program. Not only do the background checks need to be completed but “new identity cards must replace the standard employee flash-card badges by Oct. 27, 2008.”
So, if you are a Federal agency, you’re supposed to get the background checks done and then get the new cards done. No changes to the deadlines. But of course, if the DHS isn’t enforcing the deadline and nobody’s making it, you could say it’s not really a deadline.
One of the great things about working in business or a not-for-profit […]