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Agenda | Employment & Staffing
Thorough screening of recruits can help prevent surprises.
When you look at the person sitting across from you during an employment interview, do you wonder whether the candidate has a criminal background? A drug problem? Has lied about his or her credentials?
That's more likely than you might think. Between January 1998 and October 2000, American Background Information Services Inc. (ABI), based in Winchester, Va., found undisclosed criminal backgrounds on 12.6 percent of the people it screened.
That number is typical, other experts say. "Ten [percent] to 20 percent of applicants flat out lie," says Randy Baker, HR manager at Birch Telecomm in Emporia, Kan.
About 8.3 percent of applicants screened have a criminal history, and 23 percent have misrepresented their employment or education credentials, says Blair Cohen, CEO of InfoMart Inc., an employment screening company based in Atlanta.
In some industries, these figures are even higher. Telemarketing applicants have a criminal rate of 30 percent to 40 percent, according to Kit Fremin, owner of Background Check International LLC in Temecula, Calif.
In spite of these startling figures, half of companies are doing their own pre-employment screening, and most are not checking criminal history or credit reports, says Jason B. Morris, president and CEO of Background Information Services Inc. in Cleveland.
More Criminal Checks
But that may be changing after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Employment-screening companies say inquiries about their services are way up, although the increase hasn't yet translated into more paying clients.
"This has shaken most companies," says Daniel Paulsen, chief operating officer of the Employment Screening Alliance Group in Clearwater, Fla. "Within days of Sept. 11, we saw a tripling in the number of hits on our web site." His company also has fielded calls from industries it hadn't heard from prior to the attacks, including companies that handle or clean up hazardous materials.
Representatives from security guard services, sports complexes and temporary staffing agencies also have shown more interest in screening applicants since the attacks, says Robert Mather, president of Pre-employ.com Inc. in Redding, Calif.
Under the nation's heightened security concerns, companies that already were outsourcing background checks are looking to do more extensive searches...