This week in HR, I turn to screening candidates for hire. Screening for criminal background, drug use, credit health, motor vehicle driving record, sex offense, and social security number trace, not to mention reference checking and prior employment verification, can be costly for employers. A dragged-out hiring process can turn off good candidates. And it can be extremely tedious to manage the process. If you don’t understand the importance of screening employees, you might think it’s all a waste of time and money.

When I think about candidate vetting, I don’t see any road to hire that doesn’t include a clearly articulated condition of some or all screening options detailed above for employment. I have interviewed too many seemingly great candidates, who turned out to be liars and frauds, really. I have narrowly averted major mistakes just in the nick of time, thanks to background screening.

Screening Pros and Cons Cheat-Sheet

Standard Options

• Social Security Verification: validates the applicant's Social Security number, date of birth and former addresses.
• Prior Employment Verification: confirms applicant's employment with the listed companies, including dates of employment, position held and additional information available pertaining to performance rating, reason for departure and eligibility for rehire. This verification will be run on the past two employers or the previous five years, whichever comes first.
• Personal and Professional References: calls will be placed to individuals listed as references by the applicant.
• Educational Verification: confirms the applicant's claimed educational institution, including the years attended and the degree/diploma received.
• Professional License & Certificate Confirmation: confirms the applicant’s claimed licenses and certificates were earned and received.
• Social Media & Internet Check: scans the internet and social media sites for more information on how prospective employees represent themselves, their professions, their companies, and how they interact with others.
• Criminal History: includes review of criminal convictions and probation. The following factors will be considered for applicants with a criminal history:
• The nature of the crime and its relationship to the position.
• The time since the conviction.
• The number (if more than one) of convictions.
• Whether hiring, transferring, or promoting the applicant would pose an unreasonable risk to the business, its employees or its customers and vendors.
• Scans National / Federal / State / County / Municipal / State records.
• Sex Offense Registry: is necessarily separate from a criminal screening, because sex offense records are maintained in a separate database.

The following additional background searches will be required if applicable to the position:

• Motor Vehicle Records: provides a report on an individual's driving history in the state requested. This search will be run when driving is an essential requirement of the position.
• Credit History: confirms candidate's credit history. This search will be run for positions that involve management of funds and/or handling of cash or credit cards.

How to Decide?

Naturally, we all believe we are deploying a keen sensibility about people; a common refrain from hiring managers is, “I’m a great judge of character.” In my time of high-volume recruiting of attorneys, I hired and interviewed over ten thousand professionals all over the world. At one lit support tech company, we had over twelve thousand applicant records in our US ATS alone, with another thousand in the UK alone, not to mention those in other EU countries and Australia. We would do group interviews in addition to a required 50 individual interviews every week for every recruiter. I found that performance, integrity, and competency didn’t always line up with my gut instinct, and my recruiters had similar assessments. The point is, properly vetting candidates for hire, is fundamental if protecting your business brand and your employees is a priority to you.

Not all roles will require such strident vetting, but you should be sure to have articulated clear criteria for why you need certain reports on candidates before deploying a screening program. In other words, you don’t need a credit report on a low-level dishwasher, who will never have access to your balance sheet and bank accounts. You might, however, want to know if they’ve been involved in an auto-theft ring. If you have child- customers, patients, or wards in your business model, you might consider sex offender registry searches for new hires. Not only is the safety of employees, customers, patients, the business, et al at stake, but your very business reputation could be at stake. What would you do if you relied on younger customers, and it became widely known that you had a child predator on your payroll?

Closing Precepts

Consider the impact of a missed detail on your customers, your business, your brand, and your employees. Consistently apply background screening programs, whether it’s customized per paygrade, position, across the board, etc. Consider the range of access that each role has before deciding whether you need to delve too deeply into your employees backgrounds—apply the who needs to know / what do we need to know (really need) rubric. Ensure you file the screening reports – anything related to FCRA in the employee’s medical files and always be sure that only the HR department is privy to screening reports. Discretion, discretion, discretion, consistency, consistency, and finally necessity. Finally, know the laws on banning the box and make sure you are in the proper sequence for when you should screen in the hiring process and what to do should you make an adverse decision about their hire.