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Members of the background-checking industry strive to implement standards for quality and ethical operations.
Human resource professionals responsible for pre-employment screening soon will have a yardstick to help them in their research and selection of background-screening partners.
The National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS), an industry group based in Morrisville, N.C., plans to unveil a comprehensive, six-pronged certification and accreditation process for member firms in April, coinciding with the association's 2008 annual conference in New Orleans.
Industry standards should address a lingering and longstanding concern among employers: the absence of a concrete benchmark to vet and verify the quality of the background screeners they choose.
The certification process is the culmination of three years of study, says Michael Coffey, president and founder of Imperative Information Group, a Fort Worth, Texas-based employment-investigations and consulting company, and a director and board liaison of the NAPBS Ethics & Accreditation Committee.
Through the accreditation program, NAPBS members want to identify "gold standard" pre-employment background-screening firms that excel in the areas of consumer protection, legal compliance, client education, data quality, verification and business practices, says Coffey, a former HR manager.
Taming a Wild Ride
When NAPBS was founded in 2003, it counted about 200 member companies. Now, the young but increasingly dominant and influential association boasts 650 members.
The group was launched with a mission of bringing some order to a far-flung and fast-growing industry that had mushroomed in size and scope after heightened post-Sept. 11 security concerns and well-publicized corporate ethics scandals drove demand for increased background screening.
Indeed, 85 percent of HR professionals surveyed reported that their organizations conduct-or hire outside agencies to conduct-background investigations on potential employees, according to separate 2006 and 2004 polls addressing background-checking practices among members of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). That's up from 51 percent who said they did so in 1996.
"A perfect storm of events grew the industry, and it grew largely without regulation, standardization, organization or coordination," says Lester Rosen, an attorney and founder of Employment Screening Resources Inc., a pre-employment background-screening company in Novato, Calif. He chaired the steering committee that founded NAPBS. "It truly was the 'Wild West' in a lot of ways," he says.
Taming that territory was a tall order, admits...