Background Check News

Background investigations are hard enough as is without having to deal with locating records in foreign countries. The named investigative agency in the article below outsourced its search of Canadian criminal records to a vendor who handles those types of requests. Unfortunately, this common practice turned bad, and the data vendor is now being sued by the investigative company.

This high profile instance is just the most recent of many cases. The case involves a reality television star and a murder investigation, which has brought even more media attention to the industry and the type of investigation that was done. This article is definitely worth a read. It brings to light the difficulty in screening applicants and employees who have lived outside of the country.

How can we ever verify that a record from a foreign country is accurate? Canada is one example, but many vendors offer searches in countries that are far less civilized. Where are these searches actually being conducted?  Can we ever be sure that someone who lived outside of the United States for a period of time was not convicted of any crimes while abroad?

http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/10/26/Shoddy_Background_Check_on_Reality_TV_Star_Alleged_to_Ruin_Agency.htm

Too many times I have heard stories about applicants being denied jobs because of their background investigations. These are people who are told they have criminal records when they have never been arrested.  Most of this time this happens because of data vendors who do not hand view their results and check to make sure that the records in the database actually pertain to the applicant they are screening.  This usually happens with applicants  with common names.  What occurs is that an applicant may have the same name or date of birth as someone who has a criminal history.  The software automatically assumes that the arrest data pertains to the applicant  and includes it in the report to the employer.

Although not all methods are perfect, database background screening companies that utilize software programs to run their searches through outdated, publicly available sources are at the highest risk of error. Individuals with common names are also at a much higher risk.

The video link below from CNN is an example of how someone with a common name was denied a job because a criminal record belonging to someone else was in his background investigation. I can tell you that an experienced investigator would have caught the discrepancy and double checked the findings.

Hopefully more employers will see the consequences of using instant background searches conducted by computer software.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/business/2009/09/29/willis.privacy.data.cnn

Clients often ask “what kind of searches can you do�. The truth is that there are dozens of different searches that are available to an investigator as part of an employee background check. Some of the searches that are most commonly selected by our clients include:

Driving Records
Credit Checks
Criminal Records (County Level and State Level)
Social Security Verification
Residential History
Education Records
Civil Court Records
Workers’ Compensation
Bankruptcy Records
Character References
State Licensing Records
Previous Employment Verification
Sex Offender Records

For each corporation, HR Department or small business, the need for information is different. Each client is able to choose the searches that they see fit for their applicants. The question still remains; “what is a good set of searches�. My usual recommendation for a company without industry standards or an idea of what is really important is to conduct state and county level criminal record searches along with a national sex offender search and a name, address and social security number verification search. In conducting these searches, our clients feel confident that their applicant does not have any criminal records in the state or county in which they reside in. Additionally, because we verified that applicant’s social security number, name, date of birth and residential history, we are confident that we conducted searches on the correct person and that the applicant is who they say they are.