Jessica Rose has been promoted to Senior Data Processor. Jessica has been with employeescreenIQ since August 2002.

Aleisha Webb has been promoted to Customer Relations Associate. Aleisha has been with employeescreenIQ since October 2004.

Lauren Valenty has been promoted to Senior Background Specialist. Lauren has been with employeescreenIQ since October 2004.

Syretta Arnold has been promoted to Senior Background Specialist. Syretta has been with employeescreenIQ since August 2004.

ith employeescreenIQ since August 2004.

Sebastian Zalewski joined employeescreenIQ in January as a Background Specialist. Sebastian has a B.A. from Miami University. He double majored in Political Science and Public Administration. He is fluent in 3 languages.

Theron Gamble joined employeescreenIQ in February as a Background Specialist. Theron attended The George Washington University majoring in International Affairs, and brings experience to BIS from the Steel Service Center Industry.

Heather Robinson joined employeescreenIQ in March as a Criminal Records Specialist. Heather is currently majoring in Business Administration at the University of Phoenix and has previous experience as a Customer Service Representative.

Norene Katz joined employeescreenIQ’s Accounting and Administraton Department in April. Norene previously managed a retail store and volunteers time supporting the Cleveland Baseball Academy.

employeescreenIQ president, Jason B. Morris was installed as co-chair of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners on April 12, 2005 at the association’s annual conference in San Antonio, TX. Morris will serve a one year term ending in April, 2006 and will focus an issues related to industry best practices and standards.

New! employeescreenIQ Blog

employeescreenIQ is proud to introduce our very own blog spot, BIS Blog, designed to provide you with commentary on recent news, events and happenings within BIS and the employment screening field at large. We encourage you to visit as often as you’d like and welcome your participation. Maybe we can learn something from each other.

employeescreenIQ Blog can be launched by clicking on this hyperlink or from our homepage at www.employeescreen.com.

While no security program can be deemed impenetrable, employeescreenIQ mitigates any potential breach through the use of the following tactics. For security purposes, this list is not all inclusive:

• employeescreenIQ confines the scope of our business to the pre-employment screening market segment (there are other permissible purposes for Consumer Reporting under the FCRA, but we intentionally limit our efforts to our area of expertise)Limiting our focus to the pre-employment screening segment is a very significant distinction. The security breaches that have made recent headlines resulted from granting access to a massive “proprietary database” of consumer information to fake companies that did not have a permissible use for that information. These databases are used for many purposes other than pre-employment screening, and not all of these uses are as heavily regulated as pre-employment screening. BIS maintains no proprietary database of public records. We go to the public record source (county/federal courts, credit bureaus, state agencies, etc.) for each and every screen we perform.
• employeescreenIQ verifies that all new clients are registered businesses and maintain an active license through state incorporation recordsDuring the account setup process, employeescreenIQ obtains a copy of the current business license from the prospective client and cross checks validity through state incorporation records.
• employeescreenIQ conducts a physical inspection of the administrative offices of ALL privately held clientsThe credit bureaus have strongly recommended that all Consumer Reporting Agencies conduct a physical inspection of the administrative offices of privately held clients that will be requesting credit reports. Anticipating the current trend, employeescreenIQ adopted and surpassed this recommendation in 2003 by requiring a physical inspection for all new privately held clients, regardless of the service(s) they intend to use, to verify a legitimate business operating under the registered name and location, and establish a permissible use for obtaining Consumer Reports.
• employeescreenIQ estimates and monitors screening activity on a per client basis to ensure it is appropriate for a business in said industry of similar sizeemployeescreenIQ contacts clients if there is an unexpected “spike” in demand to explore the reason and any service enhancements we may be able to provide.
• employeescreenIQ cross checks each client against a monthly watch-list furnished by the credit bureaus

employeescreenIQ takes very seriously the trust that our clients place in us to maintain strict legal compliance and respect for your candidates’ privacy. We will continue to develop standards and practices designed to protect that trust.

employeescreenIQ invites all clients to participate in the 2005 Client Satisfaction Survey. This short survey will only take 5-10 minutes and gives us the opportunity to keep improving our ability to serve you as effectively as possible. It can be accessed by logging onto our website or clicking on the link below.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=55405958235

Survey questions range from the ease of use of our website to the importance you place on the different types of services you utilize. It helps us understand how long you expect a background check to take, while at the same time evaluating how well we work with you when we see things on a report you would like us to highlight.

The information our clients provide indeed makes a difference. In the past, we have customized product and service offerings for some clients and made wholesale procedural changes for others based on responses to this survey.

As a founding member of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (www.napbs.com), we are committed to promoting ethical standards and best practices industry-wide. Key to this is gaining an understanding of the expectations of our clients. Managing expectations is crucial in the screening industry because of the prevalence of inexpensive shortcuts that can create massive liability. Asking questions is a best practices method that keeps us attuned to each client’s unique needs and allows us to more effectively address knowledge gaps.

Please don’t hesitate to take advantage of this tool that directly improves our ability to deliver value to you. At this point in time, less than 10% of our clients have completed the survey. The best way for us to deliver to you everything you need to make a sound hiring decision, is to share with us feedback on your experience.

Thank you in advance for participating and look for the survey results in the next issue of The Verifier.

NAPBS has grown by leaps and bounds this year, currently over 400 companies have made the decision to join forces to have one voice for our industry. With recent news about security breaches and identity theft, Washington has been flooded with new legislative efforts to help consumers out with various issues. Before the formation of NAPBS the industry had no unified voice; that meant bills were passed that severely hampered a company’s ability to perform quality and accurate background checks. Currently we are working with legislatures and elected officials showing them various ways to combat these issues without affecting our industry and our clients’ ability to hire qualified, safe employees.

This week NAPBS held its second annual conference in San Antonio, TX. It was a huge success. Members worked with privacy organizations to help consumers understand the differences between what has been happening with large data brokers and how similar security breaches and the resulting identity theft is unlikely to happen at companies that focus solely on employment screening. In addition we were further educated on various state laws and federal updates to the FCRA. Jason B Morris, President of employeescreenIQ took over as co-chairman of the 2005-06 board of directors of NAPBS.

NAPBS will hold a mid-year government relations conference in New Orleans and a “March on Washington” in July in order to meet with various elected officials to further our cause. As the association grows we will be lobbying congress to and other state legislatures to further the cause of NAPBS and the employers we represent. For more information on NAPBS please visit their website at www.napbs.com.

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Selecting the right candidate for the right position is one of the most important challenges faced by organizations today. Hiring the wrong individual typically costs an organization 150 percent of the employee’s annual salary – and the cost of a bad hire is even greater for management level positions. To minimize the subjectivity leading to poor hiring decisions, employers should use validated selection tools to reduce turnover, increase productivity, improve customer service, and increase revenue. Better hiring translates into real dollars

To avoid subjective, bad employment decisions, organizations must ensure their decisions are based on criteria related to employees’ competencies to perform essential job functions, and not on unlawful criteria such as race, sex, age or disability. The more subjective the criteria, the more difficult it will be for an employer to establish that its employment decisions were made on job-relevant criteria. The advantage of using objective tools such as the PsyMax Solutions Work Style Assessment inventory is that it gathers objective, job-relevant data that allows organizations to rank-order candidates based on their likelihood of success if hired. The procedures discussed here will help establish and document the job-relatedness of your process.

Developing a Success Profile

We recommend developing Success Profiles for each targeted job. Your approach to determining core competencies should be consistent with best practice approaches to job analysis and competency modeling such as:

• Facilitate a focus group workshop with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to determine which work styles are most important for a given job.
• Conduct a questionnaire-based job analysis. Multiple SMEs will complete a survey regarding which work behaviors are most critical for performing the job.

Seeing Beneath the Resume

Resumes provide information about skills, knowledge, and experiences. These are useful predictors of how well people will perform in their current jobs. However, as job requirements change, the skills, knowledge, and experiences that were important for successful job performance may also change. Therefore, measuring psychological factors during the hiring process can have the highest Return On Investment because these factors enable employees to develop the knowledge, experience, and skill needed to succeed in any job. Similarly, background and credit checks are also critical foundational factors that help assess honesty and integrity – traits that are important for all jobs.

Case Study

Borders Group has over 32,000 employees and operates over 12,000 Borders and Waldenbooks stores around the world. Since 2002, Borders has used the work-style assessment inventory as a predictive tool to assist in the selection of its store and district managers. As a first step, Borders worked with psychologists at PsyMax Solutions to develop a success profile of the most critical work styles for performing these jobs. They continue to use the WSA inventory work style and degree-of-fit scores as part of the hiring process.

A recent independent study published by Cornell University documented that the WSA inventory has had a significant effect on store profits at Borders. The District Managers’ WSA inventory scores over the last two years were analyzed. There was a significant relationship between District Managers’ work styles, as measured by the WSA inventory, and annual district profitability. District Managers who scored better on the WSA had increased annual profits of $11 million.

Dan Smith, Borders’ senior vice president of human resources, said, “Borders’ success is determined by the management team at each location, and PsyMax helps us to identify the candidates with the characteristics that we know drive sales most.” Borders concluded that using the assessment tools to help select managers is well worth the cost, and it will continue utilizing them. Borders also plans to conduct training programs for store managers and district managers to help them develop the specific work styles that drive profitability.

AUTHOR BIO

William Shepherd, Ph.D., is an industrial/organizational psychologist and president and chief operating officer of PsyMax Solutions, a Cleveland-based HR assessment and development company. Dr. Shepherd’s previous posts include work in the Employee Capability & Competency Design group at GTE, and in the Global Selection Solutions Practice area of Personnel Decisions International. Most recently, Dr. Shepherd was the Director of Solution Design for ePredix, providing human capital measurement tools that drive organizational profitability.

Shepherd’s applied work has included developing competency models, assessments, interview systems, and development tools for organizations to use in sourcing, hiring, developing, and promoting workers. He has led strategic staffing audits of organizations to evaluate and benchmark their staffing and retention methods against best practices. His work also has included the development, administration, interpretation, and action planning of organizational culture surveys.

Dr. Shepherd has presented his research at academic conferences of the American Psychological Association, the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and the Human Capital Metrics Consortium. In addition, he has been published in Personnel Psychology and the International Human Resources Information Management Journal. He is also a contributing author to the Successful Manager’s Handbook. His recent presentations have focused on the emerging trends and implications of Internet-based assessment. He may be contacted via e-mail at wshepherd@psymaxsolutions.com.

So you’re looking to hire an applicant that has lived or resides outside of the United States? You should still conduct a background investigation, right? Far too often, well intentioned HR executives and recruiters overlook this vital step in the hiring process, thinking international background information is either inaccessible or unduly expensive. Increasingly, U.S.-based companies and multinational employers based overseas assume unnecessary risk when hiring candidates from outside the U.S. if they fail to perform due diligence on those individuals.

The “Background” on international background screening

Today, we are at an interesting crossroads for both U.S. and international screening. The advent of the internet has made access to and mobility of information easier than ever worldwide. This has resulted in great efficiencies, as well as unintended side effects, such as privacy violations and identity theft. In the U.S., these side effects have been addressed through federal and state legislation requiring a permissible use for the information and strict guidelines regarding information handling and ensuring accuracy and reliability.

Internationally, there are few standards in employment screening processes. From one country to the next, records maintenance capabilities, procedures, and rules for access vary widely. To begin with, the ability to access information in various countries is dependent on compliance with global information exchange rules for ensuring data security across international borders. One such compliance framework is the European Union’s Directive on Data Protection, which prevents the transfer of personal data to non-EU nations that do not meet the European “adequacy” standard for privacy protection. A select few U.S. companies, including employeescreenIQ, are Safe Harbor certified with the U.S. Department of Commerce to meet the requirements for international data exchange and privacy protection.

Viable options

There are effective screening tools available to organizations that employ individuals from around the globe. BIS provides access to country-specific criminal history research, and language-based services to verify past employment, education, and personal references. Another important tool when conducting an international background check is an OFAC (Office of Foreign Asset Control) Terrorist Watch List Search, enabling an employer to cross reference their applicant against a global list of known terrorists and deviants.

International criminal history

International criminal history research begins with identifying the office(s) or agency responsible for maintaining criminal records in a particular country or region, then following whatever procedure that office makes available. employeescreenIQ has established access to criminal history information in more than 150 countries around the world. The cost and turnaround time of a criminal history search varies widely from one country to the next, and typically there is no process for oversight or auditing of the results. The key is that the tool is available and can be considered the best information reasonably available in a given country.

Language-based verification services

Verification services (employment, education, and reference checks) are typically not dependent on a national office or agency, but must be requested directly through the employer, school, or individual. They are performed via telephone, and fax when necessary, in the native language of the locality. Distinctions between U.S. and overseas verifications include the increased expense of multiple long distance phone calls and faxes, and the fact that complete and accurate contact information is mandatory, as it can be virtually impossible to locate a company or individual overseas without precise contact information. As in the U.S., educational institutions and personal references around the world typically consider it their obligation to vouch for those upon whom they have conferred degrees or agreed to act as references. Precise contact information, again, is crucial to completion. employeescreenIQ offers verification services in over 14 languages and dialects, covering over 225 countries around the world.

Key considerations

Collectively speaking, International screening tools are in their infancy compared with the current state of employment screening in the U.S. This means that there are drawbacks: they are more expensive, they average longer turnaround times, and in most cases there is little recourse if an applicant disputes something in the report. Compared with the average company’s investment in recruiting, relocation, training and salary of a new employee, the expense is miniscule. Due diligence and consistency in the hiring process are industry standards for U.S. companies, and are closely scrutinized in the event of employment litigation. These standards are becoming increasingly relevant overseas as international economies and business practices continue to evolve.

employeescreenIQ Global Screening Services

employeescreenIQ’s Global Screening Services are an important tool in an increasingly global business environment. As with our domestic services, you can trust employeescreenIQ to stay on top of the latest developments worldwide in accessing reliable, timely, and compliant information to increase the value of your hiring decisions.

For more information regarding international background checks and the valuable service employeescreenIQ provides, please visit us at www.employeescreen.com/global.

It is predicted that five percent of U.S. adults will be victimized by identity theft in 2005, up from 3.5 percent in 2003i. Awareness of identity theft has been steadily increasing for several years, and has risen dramatically in recent months as some very large and well known companies have reluctantly admitted security breaches. Criminals gained fraudulent access to the massive proprietary databases of consumer data maintained by these companies by posing as legitimate businesses. The due diligence processes utilized by these companies failed to identify them as security threats, and they obtained personal information of untold thousands of individuals nationwide.

If you’ve got it, you shouldn’t always flaunt it

Consumer data is extremely valuable information and with a big enough database, its uses are virtually unlimited. Unfortunately, its abuses are virtually unlimited as well. Companies that maintain these databases have strong incentives to continually identify new uses and users of the information, some of which are more heavily regulated than others. Without proper credentialing of users, it becomes only a matter of time before the proverbial “bull in a china shop” is unleashed. To complicate matters further, experts have speculated that it is likely that similar breaches have occurred unexposed in the past. On the victim’s side, because identity theft can go undetected for months, the full extent and consequences of these breaches may never be known.

The real world is our stage

As a Consumer Reporting Agency, employeescreenIQ competes directly with many companies that maintain “proprietary databases” of consumer information, including those that have been in the news recently. A key distinction is that employeescreenIQ does not maintain any “proprietary database” of consumer data. We go directly to the public record source for every background check we perform, be it county courthouses, credit bureaus, previous employers, degree-granting institutions, or one of many other sources. Conducting primary research every time ensures that the information we provide to our clients is current, complete, and will stand up to scrutiny if challenged.

Respect for all trades, but master of only one

Another important distinction is that employeescreenIQ focuses solely on pre-employment screening. We do not collect and store mountains of disparate data, and constantly search for new ways to leverage it. We maintain strict compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and any personal identifying information is provided to us with written permission from the individual him/herself. We maintain archives of our completed Consumer Reports indefinitely, for the convenience of our clients. We do not market, sell, or grant access to these archives to anyone except the client that purchased the original Consumer Report on that individual. While we may reference a previous report if we run a search on the same person in the future, we will not report adverse information from the original report until we have re-verified, at the public record source, that the information is still current and accurate.

It’s okay to look at the forest, but only if you look at the trees first

employeescreenIQ does provide access to statewide and nationwide criminal database resources for our clients that would like to cover extra ground in addition to a County Criminal Record Search based on a SSN Trace address history. These database searches are only sold with a clear understanding that they simply do not cover the full territory they imply, and with the requirement that any “hit” must be authenticated at the county court level to ensure FCRA compliance.

employeescreenIQ commitment

Our clients understand that employeescreenIQ places the highest priority on data security and protection of individual privacy rights. We will not compromise our position as a best-practices industry leader by abandoning our responsibilities to protect the rights of those we gather information on and to conduct thorough due diligence on those we provide information to.

Click here for a summary of employeescreenIQ’ Data Security and Privacy Protection Policies