Ted L Moss, Security Expert

Background Checks: Make Sure of What You’re Buying

If you’re getting ready to hire, consider these sobering statistics:

. American businesses lose $100 billion dollars a year to employee theft and
embezzlement

. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 33% of bankruptcies are due to
employee theft

. Identity theft for employment purposes has risen 104% since 2002

.More than 2 million people suffer physical attacks on the job each year.

The truth is, regardless of what any resume might tell you, you never know who’s
coming through your door, and it only takes one employee to affect your entire operation.
The best way to protect your company from the fallout from a bad hire is through a solid
background check.

“From a broad perspective, you can consider conducting a background check as ‘risk
mitigation,’” says Ted Moss, President of Crimcheck.com. “Considering it costs between
7,000 and 15,000 to hire and train a new employee, one could argue your most valuable
assets are your employees. The simple motivation for background checks is provide a
safe and secure workplace for employees and customers as well as to make a profit.”

What to look for
The common metrics used to evaluate typical candidates include: past employment,
education, driving history, criminal history and personal credit. A lot of this information
is readily available and, if you do s Google search under “background checks,” a plethora
of potential providers will appear, offering a range of services and price points.
Perhaps the most difficult component of a background check—and the one that can most
affect any employer should it not be done correctly—is the criminal record investigation.
But it can also be the most difficult check to conduct.

“Except for the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), no national database
of criminal records exists. With over 10,000 misdemeanor courts and 3,500 county or
felony courts, there is no realistic way any private company can provide a true
nationwide search since many of these courts are autonomous and are not required or
simply choose not to submit their records to state or federal authorities,” Moss notes.
“These commercial databases are a collection of arbitrary and often erroneous data
sources with no quality control or compliance mechanism built in. The federal Fair Credit
Reporting Act (FCRA) requires employers who conduct employment screening ensure
‘Maximum possible accuracy’ when conducting a background check, yet these databases
often have dismissed cases, no disposition of the case or offer no identifiers with which to
validate that the information retrieved is on the person you wish to hire.”

In evaluating any service provider, Moss suggests finding one that provides what he
terms the “industry standard” for criminal records checks: a multiple felony/misdemeanor
check combined with a Social Security Trace (FM/SST). The F/M component
(Felony/Misdemeanor), encompasses a criminal history search at the county and city
level, which is designed to reveal any and all felony and misdemeanor convictions within
the scope of the defined service. The Social Security trace identifies potential
jurisdictions in which the applicant may have lived, providing a residential history of the
applicant for a period of approximately seven years.

The good news is that most background checks can be done quickly, with an industry
standard criminal check, employment verification and driving record taking about three
days. In addition, depending on the level of checking you’re doing and the service you
use, the check should run less than $100 per candidate, says Moss.

There are a wide variety of resources you can use to take on part of the background check
yourself , but Moss advises using caution when doing so. “Take, for instance, a driving
record search, which under the Driver Privacy Protection Act requires a permissible
purpose and written permission from the driver,” he says. “There’s also the Americans
with Disabilities Act prohibits asking questions of a medical nature on employment
verifications, such as alcohol addition. You must also consider Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission requirements, which prohibit hiring and screening policies that
might create a disparate impact on a certain population or demographic based on arrest
history vs. conviction history. The process can be fraught with pitfalls, so you need to
make sure you know what you need to know to be in compliance with the laws.”

In tackling the process, “find a reputable firm through a recommendation from a business
associate or professional organization and get their advice,” offers Moss. “If they have
integrity they will spell out the advantages and disadvantages of the different products
and encourage you to verify what they tell you. The point is to take action. John Kennedy
said ‘There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long range
risks and costs of comfortable inaction.’