Background Check News

In the beginning processes of hiring a new employee, companies base their applicant pool on certain credentials such as experience, education and personality. These are the core principals that are important in candidates however they are not the only thing that are needed to be considered. A major trait that an employer should look into is criminal history but with focuses on other aspects it is easy to see why this may be overlooked. Finding the perfect applicant not only need to possess the correct job requirements but they also need to be someone who is trustworthy and free of criminal records that could reflect poorly on the company.

According to the Wall Street Journal, small businesses are particularly vulnerable to embezzlement and other kinds of employee theft because they lack the checks and balances of big corporations (By: Colleen Debaise 02/07/2010). Conducting a criminal history background investigation on applicants is something that is generally quick, easy and cost effective.

As important and overlooked as this is, spending anywhere from $20.00 to $150.00 will provide you with a comprehensive criminal history check on an applicant to weed them out and save your company in the future.

New advances in computer forensics and special designated tasks forces have been able to crack down on child pornography cases. In the recent months/year more and more of these cases have come to light and it is getting harder for these types of criminals to hide. With an appropriate background investigation these individuals can be avoided in your hiring process.

Hiring a pedophile could be disastrous to your company and can cause irreparable damages. In one recent case, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a man who reportedly had explicit images of young boys engaging in sexual activity on his home computer. This individual had been employed with a local YMCA for months prior to this arrest and in direct unsupervised contact with children. It is not know yet if this individual has had prior criminal convictions but it is certain now that any future employers should catch this record.

Many times after cases like this the offenders attempt to move away from their issues and find employment in other states/counties. This is why it is important to have an actual individual search for records instead of a data source provider searching in the applicant’s most recent area of residence. When screening prospective employees it is important to search for records in the area that the applicant has resided the longest and pay attention to multiple associated residences and recent moves.

Recently many companies have been reevaluating their current employees and decided to conduct wider background checks on these individuals.

In one case the California Board of Registered Nursing decided to conduct a more strict background check on employees hired over ten years ago to coincide with current background regulations. What they found as a result shocked many people, to say the least. Some of the nurses currently employed in California were found to have an arrest record which included many misdemeanor offenses. The most shocking of all came when at least 65 major crimes were located including convictions of murder, sex offenses, assault and robbery.

While new searches and advances come out every day, making background checks more comprehensive, large felonious crimes should have not be missed even ten years ago. Based on these studies we have found that not only is it important to screen new candidates but perhaps those who were hired when background screening was not used or as far advanced as it is now.

If you are one of the fortunate companies who are hiring new employees at this time, now is better then ever to make sure your applicants are who they say they are.  As most people are aware, the recession has had an impact on many different areas of employment.  Congruent to this, we have noticed an inherent increase with the number of applicants who stretch their qualifications or mislead their criminal history in order to bridge the gap between their actual qualifications, and those who are educated and trained correctly for the position.

As you may have heard or witnessed before a common saying amongst those applying for a job is, “Don’t worry about it, everyone lies on their application.�  After doing pre-employment screening for many years we have found that although few, applicants do in fact embrace this negative habit.

Prior to the recession positions in virtually every field were available but now that this has changed, we find that applicants are venturing out to positions that do not fit their education or prior work experience.  Since there are most likely individuals who are more than qualified with the field applying for the same position, the lesser are padding their resumes to the point of providing false information.  With the job market becoming more and more competitive, due to the limited number of positions available, individuals tend to make false education claims or leave out criminal history in order to seem more marketable.

Even through the initial hiring process simple screening of criminal history and education can save time in interviewing applicants that are not qualified or have an extensive criminal record.  Additional screening on applicants that pass the initial process can always be conducted when a narrower applicant pool has been created.  Saving time is on top of any Corporation, Limited Liability Company and Small Business’s cost cutting list and with the ability to outsource employment screening it is a great opportunity to reduce the time wasted on false applicants.

We often get asked “what kind of things do you find when conducting pre-employment screening?” This is usually followed up by “how many of the employees that you screen actually have criminal records?”

Simply put, most employees and potential hires are not criminals and usually the amount of criminal records we locate depends on the employer we are working for and the industry the employee is in.

A quick sample of the last 100 or so employees that we screened shows a variety of charges that are pretty consistent with what we have seen over the many years we have been doing this. Charges of drunk driving, driving while license suspended, drug offenses, assault and retail theft are almost always the most common. These are usually followed by domestic violence, larceny, check fraud and burglary.

It is almost impossible to put an overall percentage on the amount of applicants and employees have criminal records because of the variety of the jobs these people apply for and geographic location where they live. For a particular client who supplies workers for manual labor jobs, it is not untypical to have 25%-30% percent of their applicants turn out to have some type of crime on their record. It should be noted that most of these crimes are misdemeanors.

It is however unfortunate that we rarely see people with more serious offenses applying for jobs. Those with sex offenses and violent crimes on their records are not often seen, which is scary to think because they are becoming employed, which means that they are working for companies who do not conduct background investigations at all. A lot of the time, these individuals seek out these companies because they don’t have to fear the background screening process in order to become employed.

After years of telling children, “Don’t talk to strangers� we all too often essentially invite “strangers� into our homes to watch our children without really finding out who they are.  With horrifying headlines like, “Babysitter Convicted of Child Abuse�, “Babysitter Molested Child in Park�, “Babysitter Convicted of Murdering Child� and “Babysitter Arrested, Accused of Running Molestation Ring� no parent should feel that their neighborhood or home is immune to such a tragedy, but should know that by taking the time to look into not only the past but present criminal and social status of their potential sitter they can help protect their child.  The dangers associated with allowing a stranger into their house were all too real for the couple of a two year old girl in Minnesota, who posted an ad seeking a babysitter on Craigslist and hired respondent twenty three year old Aaron Jay Lemon.  While the parents were out Lemon assaulted the child and produced a pornographic video of the incident, to which he ultimately plead guilty in Federal Court to coercing a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct.

Should the sitter be watching the child at their own residence, the screening of the home’s occupants and its neighbors are just as important.  While the sitter themselves may not have arise any concerns, learning that their spouse, child or neighbor may be a registered sex offender or have a criminal background would be a red flag to say the least.  Tragically this was the case for at least twelve young children, ranging from fifteen years old to infancy, who were under the care of Coretta Jackson at her in home babysitting service in Pennsylvania when she knowingly allowed her live in boyfriend John Worman, who had a lengthy criminal history, to molest and rape them over a period of nine years, which he documented in over 1,100 pornographic images and videos.

Investing the time and resources into having professional investigators not only perform criminal background checks but through independent reference screening you can turn up information which would otherwise have gone unknown.  While your potential sitter may not have criminal convictions, arrests which are not referred for prosecution or have been expunged, are still available through court and police records, and could alert you to potentially alarming information, all of which experienced investigators have to knowledge needed to obtain.

The Christmas season is fast approaching and malls are beginning to hire seasonal workers; including Santa and his Elves. While some malls are taking the cautious approach by hiring Santa from companies who specialize in Santa placement, others are hiring off the street. Although Santa placement companies do exist, they are not the norm. These companies claim and probably do conduct detailed background investigations and drug tests on each of their Santas. What about the mall that you take your children to? Was Santa hired through a reputable company or does he fall into one of the more likely categories: a volunteer, a hire off the street or a friend of a mall employee who “does this type of work for fun around the holidays”. How can you be certain that the man your children are sitting on isn’t a criminal, or worse, a violent child predator? Although it would be difficult to obtain Santas name and run your own background check on him, you can contact the mall to see where Santa came from and if he was pre-screened for the job.

Hopefully, Santa was hired by the mall and run through a rigorous background investigation and drug panel. Despite this, thousands of unscreened Santas will be working at malls near you.

In this high tech, high speed world, computers and software technology are replacing much of what trained human beings have done for years. Pre-employment screening and pre-employment background checks are no different in this regard. Many software companies and date brokers have found that through the use of complex software programs they are able to search multiple sources of publically available, online information at once. These sources of data often include state incarceration records, online court information, public government databases and annually purchased “batch information� from various information vendors. The searches that are then offered by these Data Brokers are usually labeled as “National Criminal History Searches� or “National Criminal Database�. The problem is that these “National Searches� only include limited information from select states, counties and cities. There is no guarantee that the county, city or even state that your applicant resides in was searches. On top of the drawbacks of not knowing what sources were actually searched; applicants and employees with common names often fall victim to false positive criminal records. This is also the result of having computers do the thinking for you.

With private investigators on the other hand, applicants are screened by qualified, trained and experienced private investigators. The information that is searched is “direct source� information, meaning that is comes directly from the court, city or state where the data originated. This minimizes the chances that there are data entry errors and also cuts down on processing time and costs. Additional benefits include the ability to feel certain that an experienced investigator has personally conducted the searches and reviewed the incoming information. During this process, we are able to catch false positives and make certain that the results that are being reported are accurate and pertain to your applicant and not someone else.

Background investigation companies have known about Facebook, MySpace and the dozens of other social networking sites for years. We often use these sites to look into an applicant’s personal life and make an estimation of what type of character that applicant has. Employers appear to be getting in on the action as well. Numerous news reports have documented the struggle between an individual’s privacy rights and the public availability of online information. Employers and background investigation companies argue that if an applicant puts themselves online for all to see, that there is no reason they should not be able to view that information and potentially use it to make hiring decisions.

Whether you agree or disagree with the use of social networking sites as a hiring tool, you should be aware that information available online can and will be viewed by people outside of your group of friends. Included in the list of major social networking sites that are often used are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Xanga, Frendster, LiveJournal and Flickr.

If you are an investigator, background screening company or employer, these sites are invaluable in determining if you are about to hire a class act or a class clown.

What this means is that these inmates, newly released from prison, are going to be looking for employment in a market bloated with unanswered resumes. Companies that do not conduct background investigations are going to be targeted by these parolees because of their lax hiring processes. Obviously not all of these inmates are immediately looking to continue their deviance, but regardless, they will be applying for jobs that may give them access to your company assets or have direct contact with your clients.

In California alone it is estimated that 57,000 inmates could be released, all of whom will be required to find able employment. It is somewhat frightening to know that these people will be competing for jobs with the general population and in an environment without employee screening, they stand a chance of becoming employed over someone without a criminal record.

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSTRE5190CB20090210