EmployeeScreenIQ Blog

I guess you can’t blame Huffington Post blogger Erin Steiner for her post entitled “5 Stories of Background Checks Gone Awry” where she highlights five individuals who were adversely affected by inaccurate background checks.  It’s time to acknowledge that we as background screening companies and employers have a perception problem.  The mainstream media continues to highlight instances of inaccurate background checks as they occur.  I think that’s fair.  It shouldn’t happen.

Background screeners have a responsibility to their clients and to their clients’ employees and job candidates to ensure maximum possible accuracy.  That means that they should confirm that the record belongs to the subject of the report before ever reporting the information.  Employers, hiring managers and human resources can’t walk away blameless either.  They have a responsibility to partner with suppliers that are committed to taking the necessary steps to ensure the results are reliable..

That begs the question of whether the perception fair?   [...]

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There are new stories almost every week reporting a company or organization’s failure to conduct background checks on employees working with children or the elderly. We’ve blogged on several stories recently about childcare workers or school employees who were employed with a criminal record, which was discovered after they were already working for the school or daycare. Similarly, recent cases have shown that greater care should also be taken when hiring senior care workers. Background checks for senior care workers are imperative to insuring the safety and happiness of the many parents or grandparents who are placed in their care.

In New York, a new state proposal would require employee background checks on anyone applying for a job with a senior care facility. Surprisingly, the current law does not require that a background check be completed on workers in these facilities. However, a background check can be done free of charge for these facilities, so why aren’t they being done?

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You may feel there is an overload of information when it comes to school background checks lately, but many schools and organizations continue to move in a positive direction. Schools are tightening security by doing background checks on not just teachers but also parents, volunteers and other school employees.

One such school district is Johnston County in North Carolina. They are hoping to change their policy so that not only new hires are screened, but every employee would periodically have a background check done to screen for any recent criminal records since they were first employed. A recent case within the school district was a teacher’s assistant in the district who “was charged with distributing heroin in, on or within 1,000 feet.”

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It began with the disclosure that two employees at Fort Myer’s Child Development Center were arrested for assault charges on children under their care. Later it was revealed that there was a third woman caught on video assaulting a child. These cases ultimately led to an investigation that revealed 31 of 130 CDC employees had criminal records. For any company or organization, this would be a huge number-especially to have slipped through the employment background screening process. You have to wonder how these employees were hired by anyone, let alone within the military.

The first employee cases uncovered involved assaults, not sexual, but still harmful to the children involved. The two initial suspects reportedly “pinched, kneed, and punched toddlers.” The videos that later proved these violent outbursts were installed due to a mother complaining that she witnessed an employee yelling at children.

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Things are quickly winding down for the year at EmployeeScreenIQ, and we’re excited (much like Ralphie from A Christmas Story) for what’s to come in 2013. We’ve had quite a few blog posts this week that you might have missed in the hustle and bustle of the end of the month and the end of the year. Something I would like to highlight in particular is that our Employment Background Screening Trends Survey is awaiting your participation (and even better, we’ve extended the deadline through January)! As proven in 2011, our survey is a great resource for us and others in our industry. I’m not even sure where to begin wrapping up this last week because there are an overabundance of exciting stories on our blog.  I recommend taking a ten minute break from your work and scroll down our blog page. Some of the stories from this past week include, Recruiting On Social Networks: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of 2012, an important update with ban the box in Pittsburgh and the results of a CareerBuilder survey showcasing the costliness of bad hires. Thanks for reading throughout this year and happy holidays!

Recruiting On Social Networks: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of 2012

Social recruiting has seemingly moved up on HR’s list of priorities when it comes to hiring-and not only seeking job candidates via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but also searching profiles for reasons to remove a candidate from the process. If a potential employee has a public profile, HR can easily scan their page. However, this becomes a problem if employers are requesting user names and passwords to look at a candidate’s private profile. See More

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We’ve encountered countless stories of job applicants lying on their resume, whether it’s been education or employment, somehow these tricksters have gained employment or even entered Ivy League schools based on resume lies. Several months ago the news was buzzing with the story of the Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson who deceivingly listed that he earned a degree in accounting and computer science. The latter degree claim was a lie. Earlier this year it was discovered that the CEO had only received a degree in accounting from Stonehill College and built his career based on this lie.

Another fascinating fabrication from 2010 was the story of Adam Wheeler, who elaborately created a resume not with little white lies, but blatant claims of attending schools he never did and earning test scores he never received. Wheeler was admitted into Harvard and even attended until his lies were uncovered.

It’s troubling that if Thompson and Wheeler got away with lies like these, there are definitely employees that are slipping through the cracks all the time. Whether it’s a huge lie like these two or something smaller, it’s disconcerting that either these companies are not completing employment background checks or these background checks are not being done thoroughly.

A recent Careerbuilder survey revealed intriguing statistics from employers saying they’ve made costly hiring mistakes in the past year.  [...]

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You probably wouldn’t hire this guy…knowing he has walked into several businesses on the premise that he’s applying for a job, and then precedes to rob these stores. The main stores include Subway and Starbucks near the San Fernando Valley. The man, known as the “job app bandit,” requests a job application and then pulls out a gun demanding money. He’s robbed nine different locations in the same general vicinity. News Channel 5 in Cleveland reported that most of his targets were Subway and Starbucks-could he have a personal vendetta against these companies? Probably not, but it’s curious that those have been his main targets. I also wonder if he could already have a criminal background and would not have been hired even if he applied for these jobs.

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As another holiday season approaches, there are many companies hiring employees for temporary positions. One of these holiday jobs includes finding individuals to work as Santa-whether it’s in a mall, department store or an event. It may only be a few seconds when children sit on a stranger’s lap and tell him their Christmas wish list, but I’m sure more than one parent has questioned-who is the man behind the beard?

In years past, there have been cases when Santa turns out to be a registered sex offender, but employers had no knowledge because they failed to do an employment background check. So how are these sketchy Santa’s uncovered? In some circumstances, they were recognized by someone who happened to see them working.

Not only is Santa under suspicion, but a story we talked about last year revealed that someone dressed up as Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster was a registered sex offender. See our past blog post below as well as an article about the most recent Santa mishap in Cleveland, Texas.

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In just a couple weeks, our 2012 Employment Background Screening Trends survey will be wrapping up, so we’re taking a few moments to reflect on the results of last year’s survey as well as review the upcoming trends for 2013. See below for last year’s survey results. In addition, as we eagerly await the results from this year’s survey, take a look at the comparisons of 2012 trends to the upcoming trends of 2013: [...]

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There are new cases of employees failing to disclose information on job applications every day.  This particular story as reported by News Channel 5, hits close to home as EmployeeScreenIQ is located in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The two employees, Patrick J. Gallagher, Grounds/Maintenance Worker, and Michael J. Gallagher, Safety & Health Coordinator, provided misleading information on their job applications-one did not disclose his criminal history in full, and the other listed false education information.

However, while there was a failure for the two employees to provide this information, one must also question if background checks were completed, and if so, how thorough were the background checks if this information was discovered years later? An eight page report was provided on the News Channel 5 website which includes the details of this story, but it does not detail if there was a previous investigation or background check completed, prior to these allegations. The allegations were:

• Patrick failed to disclose his criminal history on his application for a position with Cuyahoga County.
• Michael falsified his original application as well as an application for promotion with the information that he earned an Associate’s degree from Cuyahoga Community College.

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