Helping Prevent Headaches
One Applicant at a Time
Know what to ask — and what not to ask — during employment verification
February 8th, 2012Checking an applicant’s professional references is a critical step in the pre-employment screening process. But do you know what you can and can’t ask? While performing employment verification, any human resources executive or hiring pro can make the innocent error of asking questions that infringe on an applicant’s privacy or open up the employer to discrimination claims by someone who is not ultimately offered the job.
The easiest way to remember what is off limits is to remember you can’t ask a reference any questions you are prohibited from asking an applicant. You must keep the conversation on job-related issues. Here are some sample questions to help get you in the right frame of mind:
- What was the employee’s starting salary? Ending salary?
- What was the employee’s starting position? Ending position?
- Please describe your reporting relationship with the candidate?
- Please describe the key responsibilities of the candidate in his/her current position.
- How many reporting staff did the candidate manage?
- Tell me about the candidate’s most important contributions to the company?
- Describe the candidate’s productivity, commitment to quality and customer orientation.
- What are the candidate’s most significant strengths?
- What are the candidate’s most significant weaknesses?
- Would you rehire this person? Why or why not?
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Social media background checks come with potential complications for employers
February 3rd, 2012More employers are using social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to find out more about their potential employees. While such social media background checks are becoming increasingly popular, they come with a host of potential land mines, including privacy issues and misinformation. Here are a few legal risks employers take when applying pre-employment screening processes to an applicant’s social media persona.
- Credibility, Accuracy and Authenticity Issues: Is the information accurate? How do you know?
- Computer Twins: Many, many people have “twins” online – more than one person who shares their exact name. How do you know whether the information you’ve found is about your job applicant, or someone else with the same name?
- Too Much Information: There is a wealth of information on social media sites that employers can now find but legally CANNOT use when making hiring decisions. Knowing an applicant’s race, religion, marital status, age, sexual orientation and other details about their personal life can open you up to a lawsuit if someone doesn’t get the job and is suspicious about why.
- Too Little Information: Employers could be accused of negligent hiring if someone is harmed by an employee and that victim can show that easily accessible information could have prevented the hiring of that person. If an employer hasn’t thoroughly checked every available resource for information on that applicant, he could be looking at a lawsuit.
- Legal Off-Duty Content: As long as it’s legal, what someone does in their personal life, on their own time, is none of an employer’s business. Yet social media sites sometimes reveals information to employers that alter their sense of a job applicant’s judgment, personality or morals. While an employer has to take into consideration the whole person when hiring, it is illegal to discriminate based on someone’s personal preferences or lifestyle choices.
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Increasing demand for caregivers underscores importance of background checks
January 31st, 2012America’s aging population is having an effect on the healthcare sector, with more people entering the healthcare field to meet the increasing demand for professional caregivers to aging and ailing parents whose children live an hour or more away.
According to the National Institute on Aging, about 7 million Americans are long-distance caregivers for their aging parents, and that number will continue to rise, as the number of adults ages 20 – the age group most often faced with caregiving – shrinks while the share of people 65 and older rapidly expands, according to the Associated Press.
With more displaced workers switching careers in order to find a job, the need for quality background checks has never been higher. The healthcare field is a unique one, in which the criminal background of a potential employee is as important as the breadth and depth of their experience in the field. Employers in the healthcare field need to be diligent in their pre-employment screening process, as more workers apply from outside the healthcare sector to fill the growing need for quality care.
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VerifyProtect.com services go above and beyond usual background check
January 27th, 2012There are plenty of employment screening services out there that can run a simple credit check and criminal background search. But what if you are an employer with special circumstances, someone who needs a certain type of background check or credentials certified? At Verify Protect, we offer all the basics of the typical pre-employment screening service, along with a host of other screening options and verification services, to meet your company’s unique needs. A few of these include:
- Healthcare Sanctions Lists: A multi-level search of healthcare industry databases from the OIG, GSA, FACIS and 800 other state and federal healthcare databases.
- Professional / Occupational State License Verification: Information obtained includes license status, and, if available, expiration date, adverse information and specialization.
- Government Foreign Nationals Watch List: Find out whether certain groups and/or individuals are identified as threats to U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security by The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of The U.S. Department of the Treasury.
- Education Verification: VerifyProtect.com will contact any college, university, trade school or high school to verify your applicant’s stated degree obtained and attendance dates. Verifications including transcripts also are available.
- National Bankruptcy Search: VerifyProtect.com has access to more than 9.5 million records compiled of bankruptcy filings from January 1992 to present.
- International Employment Verification: We will contact previous international employers to verify your applicant’s employment.
- Workers Compensation Record Search: This state-requested report generally contains case numbers, date of injury, injury type and employer at the time of the injury. Access to this information and rules for obtaining this report will vary state to state. Not all states allow this search.
- MVR – Standard Driver’s License Record Search: A report on the applicant’s driving record for the state where they are licensed. Includes license status, moving violations, and accident history.
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Pepsi agrees to $3.13 million settlement for background check policy that violated Civil Rights Act
January 20th, 2012Pepsi Beverages has agreed to pay $3.13 million and provide job offers and training to resolve a charge of race discrimination filed at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regarding its previous pre-employment screening policy.
According to the press release put out by the EEOC, the commission’s investigation revealed that “more than 300 African-Americans were adversely affected when Pepsi applied a criminal background check policy that disproportionately excluded black applicants from permanent employment. Under Pepsi’s former policy, job applicants who had been arrested pending prosecution were not hired for a permanent job even if they had never been convicted of any offense.”
The press release continues: “Pepsi’s former policy also denied employment to applicants from employment who had been arrested or convicted of certain minor offenses. The use of arrest and conviction records to deny employment can be illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when it is not relevant for the job, because it can limit the employment opportunities of applicants or workers based on their race or ethnicity.”
Pepsi has since adopted a new criminal background check policy. The settlement will mostly be divided among black applicants for positions at Pepsi.
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N.J. Education Department grants reprieve to school board members without background checks
January 17th, 2012The New Jersey Education Department gave a reprieve last week to more than 180 school board members and charter-school trustees who faced the loss of their seats over the lack of criminal background checks.
We recently reported that the law, which went into effect in May, required people responsible for deciding local school policies and budgets to undergo background checks by the end of 2011 or be immediately removed from office. Crimes that would bar someone from serving included murder, robbery, luring a child, assault and drug possession or distribution. As 2012 dawned, however, more than 300 board members still hadn’t complied.
Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf’s reprieve allows school board members to complete the fingerprinting requirement by Jan. 27 to be eligible to remain on their respective board if they are cleared through the background check process. Background checks will be required from now on for all school board members and charter trustees. School employees have had to get background checks since a law passed in 1986.
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More job applicants performing background checks on themselves
January 13th, 2012Job applicants conducting background checks on … themselves? According to some industry experts, the latest trend in pre-employment screening is something called the “self background check,” where the prospective employee conducts a background check on themselves just to see what kind of personal and professional information is available in the public domain.
Self background checks can enable a job applicant to see just how much information a prospective employer can find out about one’s criminal record, educational background and job experience, before handing in a resumé laced with half-truths or taking the leap from a current job to a new one that might not pan out. It’s along the same lines as obtaining one’s credit report to make sure there are no surprises before applying for a loan.
While we encourage this trend of job applicants making sure their public information is accurate, we advise employers to continue to conduct their own professional pre-employment screening on every prospective employee.
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New Jersey facing incomplete compliance with new trustee screening law
January 6th, 2012As of last Friday, more than 400 school board and charter school trustee members across the state of New Jersey had yet to comply with the new school trustee screening law that went into effect in May. The law required people responsible for deciding local school policies and budgets undergo background checks by the end of 2011 or be immediately removed from office. Crimes that would bar someone from serving included murder, robbery, luring a child, assault and drug possession or distribution.
According to the state Education Department, 95 percent of the more than 4,700 school board members and 70 percent of charter school trustees in New Jersey had been screened since the law was signed in May. Twelve board members had been barred from serving after completing their background checks.
The new state law is an example of how the laws are changing across the country to make background checks and pre-employment screening more of a mandatory part of the position-filling process, whether someone is elected, hired or volunteers. Likewise, the fact that not everyone is in compliance with it after more than six months is a telling example of how some school districts, employers and others are still resistant to the process.
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New year a good time to review, create drug policy
January 3rd, 2012Do you wish you had a drug screening policy in place for all current employees and new hires? Every employer should have a drug policy in place to protect one’s business assets, reputation and employees. The new year is a great time to put one in place, or to change the parameters of your current drug policy to include rules, regulations and processes you currently don’t have but need.
First and foremost, a drug policy should spell out the various circumstances that would warrant the use of drug testing. Typically, there are four such circumstances:
- Job applicants. This doesn’t mean you conduct drug testing on every single applicant, but it does ensure that prospective employees understand and agree to a drug screening as a condition of employment.
- Random employee drug screening. While employers need not use this as a “surprise” tactic, it is perfectly acceptable to let employees know they could be subject to random drug testing during their time of employment with you.
- Post accident. If you are suspicious about the circumstances surrounding a workplace accident, you want to have a policy in place that allows for drug testing of everyone involved, in order to clear you and your company of legal responsibility.
- Reasonable suspicion. If you suspect an individual or a few employees of using illegal drugs or alcohol on the job, you needn’t test everyone just to “keep things fair.” Your drug policy should allow for the special circumstances for which you can selectively control who is tested.
Another thing to carefully consider is what types of disciplinary action will be taken against employees who are found to be in violation of your drug policy. Is one failed drug test cause for immediate termination? Will you have assist the employee in entering a drug or alcohol rehabilitation program? Do you want guidelines for a probationary period for those employees who fail a test but stay on the payroll? These are all questions whose answers need to be spelled out for all to see, and every employee should be asked to read over and sign a copy of the policy immediately.
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Two new laws change the background screening business in California
December 27th, 2011If you are an employer in California or you do business in that state, you should be aware of two new laws taking effect on Jan. 1 that might change your pre-employment screening practices.
The first change, thanks to California Assembly Bill 22, is that it will be against the law for most employers and prospective employers in California from obtaining credit reports for employment purposes. Exceptions to this rule include financial institutions and those hiring for certain positions, such as managers, those in law enforcement, and positions that require access to personal information or financial information.
The other change is due to California Senate Bill 909, which appears to be the first law in the nation that addresses the issue of consumers’ personal information that is collected during background checks for employment purposes being sent “offshore” and outside the United States or its territories beyond the protection of U.S. privacy laws.
SB 909 amends the California Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRA) that regulates background checks in California and requires a new disclosure and additions to a Consumer Reporting Agency’s privacy policy to be made to consumers before their personal information is sent outside of the United States. It does not regulate or prohibit the sending of personal information outside the U.S., but it requires that consumers be told of the background screening agency’s privacy practices, including whether the consumer’s personal information will be sent outside the country.
If these new regulations will be affecting your business or the way you conduct employment screening, now is the time to read up on the changes and make sure your company, and the pre-employment screening service you hire, remains in compliance with the law.
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