Online Screening Saves Time and Money.
User-friendly tests and carefully thought-out assessments can help you find better candidates faster. Technology can’t make your hiring decisions for you, but effective online programs can add efficiency to your screening and candidate assessment processes. Used properly, these programs are particularly good at the early step of weeding out unqualified candidates. Read more

Private Schools May Check Workers - Lawmakers are considering plan for background inquiries.
High school referees, vending machine deliverymen and plumbers have to undergo extensive criminal background checks now under a new sex offender law if they do their work on public school property. Read more

Employment Screening – Justifying the Expense
Measuring cost per denial is an effective method of calculating the ROI of a company’s employment screening program.Read more.

Technology's Impact on Background Screening
Technology advances continue to impact the way we conduct business and are having a profound effect on the background screening industry. Advances in integrating information systems are creating the capability to access business information easily through one source, which is transforming background screening systems that have historically been standalone feeds.Read more.

Study Finds FBI Criminal Database Search Ineffective for Employment Background Checks
August 26, 7:45 am ET

DURHAM, N.C., Aug. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- As US employers increasingly utilize criminal background checks in their hiring process, the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) has identified one source of information that employers should avoid: the FBI Criminal Database.

In reaction to recent proposed federal legislation that would allow employers direct access to the FBI's database, NAPBS commissioned a study to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of this FBI criminal search.

The results were shocking.

The study found that in a significant percentage of searches, the FBI database returned erroneous or incomplete information.

The study, conducted by Craig N. Winston, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Sonoma State University, found that the FBI data lacks proper identifiers to credibly link a criminal hit with the subject of the investigation.

Another finding was the large number of missed records and false positives generated. For example, when analyzing a sampling of 93,274 background checks in the state of Florida, Winston's search revealed that the database missed 11.7 percent of the criminal records it should have identified. Even worse - of the more than 10,000 criminal records found, 5.5 percent of them were falsely attributed to those who were not convicted of a crime.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) compels employers to use the most up- to-date and accurate information when screening applicants for employment.

NAPBS co-chair Jason B. Morris says, "If employers are granted access to the FBI's data, they can easily be lulled into the false sense of security that they are availing themselves of the most accurate and comprehensive search available. As a result, they could be opening themselves to increased risk in the workplace and litigation from wronged job applicants."

Results from this comprehensive study can be found at http://www.napbs.com.

Founded as a non-profit trade association in 2003, the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) was established to promote ethical business practices, promote compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and foster awareness of issues related to consumer protection and privacy rights within the background screening industry.

Media Contact: Tracy Seabrook NAPBS 919.433.0123 info@napbs.com

Pre-Employment Screening Articles

Background checks could have problems
More and more employers require employee background checks, which is why it's no surprise more and more private companies are popping up offering to provide them. A Target Five Investigation shows it can be risky business. A bad background check nearly cost Eric Williams a job. Read more.

Protect Your Organization Against Negligent Hiring Suits
Speaking to a packed house June 20 during his session at the SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition, Nadell said that nothing takes the place of thorough applicant background checking. However, no background checking process is foolproof, so it's crucial for companies to know how to obtain the most accurate information while remaining compliant with the myriad federal and state laws that regulate the industry. Read more.

Cape writer's family sues over death
$10m filing names murder defendant and his employer
By Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff - May 18, 2005

The family of slain Truro writer Christa Worthington has filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against her alleged killer and the Cape Cod trash-hauling business that employed him at the time of the slaying, lawyers said yesterday.

Christopher M. McCowen, 33, was arrested last month and charged with Worthington's rape and murder after a DNA sample he gave voluntarily was matched to evidence found at the crime scene. At the time, McCowen was working as a hauler for the Cape Cod Disposal Co. , and made weekly visits to Worthington's Depot Road home to pick up her garbage.

In a lawsuit made public yesterday, a lawyer for Worthington's estate made a $10 million wrongful death claim against both McCowen and CCDC Equipment Services, Cape Cod Disposal's parent company, alleging that both were culpable in her death.

The lawsuit charges that Worthington suffered ''great pain of body and anguish of mind" at McCowen's hands and that Cape Cod Disposal ''had an obligation to use reasonable care in selecting and retaining its employees to be sent to the homes of its customers."

The company, the lawsuit alleges, failed to use reasonable care in hiring McCowen, ''who had a history of criminal and violent behavior including but not limited to burglary, grand theft, trafficking in stolen property, felony assault, and threats to women which resulted in the issuance of restraining orders."

By hiring McCowen, the company put him in a position to familiarize himself with Worthington's home and routine, the lawsuit contends.

Weymouth lawyer Chester Tennyson Jr. confirmed yesterday that he filed the lawsuit earlier this month on behalf of Worthington's estate, which is administered by her father, Christopher Worthington, and BankNorth. Worthington's daughter, Ava, who was 2 years old at the time of the killing and was found clinging to her mother's lifeless body, is a beneficiary of the estate.
Tennyson said he would have no comment on the Barnstable Superior Court lawsuit and that he had asked Worthington's relatives to refrain from talking, as well.

''We'll do our only talking in the courtroom," he said.

Francis O'Boy, McCowen's Taunton-based lawyer, also declined to comment on the lawsuit yesterday. A lawyer for Cape Cod Disposal, however, said that the company admits no liability and plans to aggressively defend itself in the lawsuit.

''First of all, it has to be proven that he [McCowen] committed the act he is accused of committing," lawyer Bruce Bierhans said. ''Then the family has to prove that my client could not only have foreseen the crime, but could also have prevented it. Under Massachusetts law, the family has a very substantial burden of proof."

''This is not a nursing home or a day-care center; they are hiring people to pick up garbage," Bierhans said. ''We believe, and it will be our position in court that Cape Cod Disposal was fully in compliance with all of their obligations under the law."

In the criminal case, a state judge yesterday rejected O'Boy's petition that McCowen be released on $50,000 cash bail and ordered him to remain in jail pending trial.

According to recently unsealed court documents, McCowen insisted to police last year that he did not kill Worthington.

State Police investigators interviewed McCowen twice, once three months after the January 2002 slaying and again two years later. After the second interview, McCowen volunteered to have a sample of his DNA taken by swab. That sample was matched last month to DNA taken from Worthington's body, according to court documents made public yesterday.

According to the affidavit, McCowen said he had limited contact with Worthington; although he went to her house every Thursday, he said he did not know her and never went inside.

''Chris McCowen stated that Christa Worthington would occasionally watch him from inside her home through the front door and would sometimes wave," Trooper Christopher S. Mason wrote of the 2002 interview in an affidavit filed two months ago in support of the murder charges against McCowen.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Pre-Employment Screening Articles

Employers Win Most Drug Testing Cases
David Shadovitz, Human Resource Executive

A new book released by the Institute for a Drug Free Workplace in Washington reveals that employers are winning most drug testing related court battles. Employers prevailed in roughly two-thirds of the nearly 1,200 legal decisions on drug testing, according to the book, 2004-2005 Guide to State and Federal Drug Testing Laws.

In the last year,” says Gina M. Petro, counsel to the institute and a co-author of the guide, “87 court decisions upheld drug testing, and 46 did not.” Since the group began tracking suits in the mid-1980’s, employers prevailed in 825 cases, while challenges have been successful in only 374 cases. The numbers are somewhat higher for federal court cases, in which employers have prevailed 76 percent of the time.


Criminal background checks incomplete How convicted felons can slip through safety net
By Bob Sullivan, Technology correspondent, MSNBC
Updated: 5:06 p.m. ET April 12, 2005

Is there a felon in the next cubicle? What about in your child's afterschool athletic league?
Employers and volunteer organizations are increasingly turning to national commercial database searches provided by private firms to ferret out potential convicts from their ranks. The searches are quick, inexpensive, and promise nationwide coverage -- in theory, preventing convicted felons from moving away from a checkered past.

But experts say the nationwide tallies are often full of holes, and contain as few as 70 percent of all felony conviction records, leading in turn to a false sense of security. Read article at MSNBC.

LexisNexis: Files May Have Been Breached
LexisNexis Says Thieves May Have Breached Computer Files Containing Information of 310,000 People

Criminals may have breached computer files containing the personal information of 310,000 people, a tenfold increase over a previous estimate of how much data was stolen from information broker LexisNexis, the company's parent said Tuesday.
Last month, London-based publisher and data broker Reed Elsevier Group PLC said criminals may have accessed personal details of 32,000 people via a breach of its recently acquired Seisint unit, part of Dayton, Ohio-based LexisNexis. LexisNexis is a Reed subsidiary.
Reed said it identified 59 instances since January 2003 in which identifying information such as Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers may have been fraudulently acquired on thousands of people. Read article…

Pre-Employment Screening Articles

The Importance of a Complete Background Check
Criminals are learning that the primary identifier in court records is date of birth and that they can conceal their past by providing a false DOB. In his new book “Sleuthing 101, Background Checks and The Law,” Barry J. Nadell, President of InfoLink advises employers to always conduct a motor vehicle report as part of their background screening program… even if the job position does not include driving. Read more…

Lack of Background Check Leads to Liability
Blair v. Defender Services Inc., 4th Cir., No. 03-1280, Oct. 25, 2004. A college student was allowed to pursue her claims for negligent hiring and retention against a janitorial staffing service after allegedly being attacked by an employee of that service, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has held. Read more…

Bad Data Fouls Background ChecksWhile recent news has folks concerned about identity theft, inaccurate data is just as big a danger -- and individuals are left to police the problem themselves. Read more…

Hiring Presents Tricky Areas for Employers
A welter of federal and state laws and legal decisions — and fears of lawsuits — have put tight constraints on what information you can ask someone you're considering for a job, or what information you can give about a former employee. Read more…

Banking body lists security breaches amid data fears
Amid growing concern about identity theft, a US banking regulator on Thursday detailed several instances of security breaches at banks and previewed new guidelines on when banks must tell the customers about such lapses. Amy Friend, assistant chief counsel at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, said that in one instance, the agency “directed a large bank to improve its employee screening policies” after determining that the bank had “inadvertently permitted a convicted felon, who engaged in identity theft-related crimes” to become an employee.

Did ChoicePoint End Run Backfire?
By Joseph Menn, LA Times, March 13, 2005

The data-collecting company has managed to avoid being bogged down by regulations -- until maybe now.

ALPHARETTA, Ga. — ChoicePoint Inc. was created to avoid just the sort of mess in which it now finds itself.

The nation's biggest private collector of personal information was spun off seven years ago from credit bureau Equifax Inc. largely to get around laws restricting the way such bureaus sell data.

Because it was not considered a financial services company, ChoicePoint was not subject to data laws, and for years the plan worked like a charm.

Freed from regulation, the company saw sales more than double — and its profit and stock price more than quadruple — as businesses demanded more data to manage risks and target marketing. ChoicePoint became the quintessential Information Age company, culling all manner of sensitive facts and figures about virtually every adult in the United States, some 19 billion records in all.

But in the wake of a security breach that allowed a ring of identity thieves to peruse tens of thousands of those records, ChoicePoint suddenly faces the sort of government oversight that it and similar companies have sought to avoid.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators are investigating ChoicePoint's practices. Last week, the Senate Banking Committee held the first in a series of congressional hearings. Legislators and industry experts predict new regulation of ChoicePoint and competing information brokers that compile and sell Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and financial histories to tens of thousands of customers, including lenders, landlords and many of the Fortune 500.

"It's very unfortunate," said former ChoicePoint Vice President Catherine Aldrich. "They are a victim of a really heinous crime, and they are going to be really penalized — the whole industry is."

Privacy advocates disagree, saying ChoicePoint brought the prospect of more vigorous regulation on itself with an aggressive push to find new customers. They note that the recent breach was only the most widely publicized and that ChoicePoint has erred before — as during the 2000 election, when it was hired by the state of Florida to run background checks on voters.

Chief Executive Derek V. Smith and other company officers declined repeated interview requests, as did company directors.

In regulatory filings and news releases, though, the company has said it is cracking down on potential identity thieves by turning away some customers, giving up a projected $15 million to $20 million in annual revenue. Last year, the company posted profit of $148 million on sales of $919 million.

In a statement to Congress last week, ChoicePoint said it could live with some measure of new regulation. In the past, information brokers have offered support for legislation and then succeeded in watering it down, according to a new book on the industry, "No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society" by Robert O'Harrow Jr.

Information Raid

The latest problems erupted when con artists posing as small-business owners looked up sensitive information on 145,000 individuals.

ChoicePoint then made several missteps. Forced to notify California consumers under a law that took effect in 2003, ChoicePoint initially said only 35,000 state residents were at risk. Only later did it acknowledge the national scope of the breach. After that, CEO Smith said the incident was the first of its kind. But The Times soon discovered that, in fact, a similar episode had occurred in 2002.

Meanwhile, ChoicePoint still hasn't checked for people who might have been victimized before the California law went into effect.

All in all, ChoicePoint's handling of the affair has only added to the chorus calling for tighter regulation.

"They probably were too cavalier about it," said analyst Brandt Sakakeeny of Deutsche Bank Securities. "They didn't expect the firestorm that they've got."

That might be because despite all the company's knowledge about the people in its databases, ChoicePoint has few direct dealings with them.

The same isn't true of Equifax, Experian Ltd. and Trans Union Corp., which must address errors in the credit reports they compile. Although ChoicePoint resells information from the three bureaus, it doesn't have to take responsibility for the content.

That legal loophole, which Congress may soon shut, has been a tremendous boon to ChoicePoint. And the company has benefited from the wording in other laws as well. Financial institutions, including banks and other lenders, face much more onerous regulation about what they can do with customer data. ChoicePoint says it doesn't meet the definition of a financial institution.

"There are a lot of dark crevices in the law that need to be opened up and filled in," said Daniel Solove, author of "The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age."

ChoicePoint has flourished by exploiting such regulatory weak spots, even in insurance services, its oldest and most profitable line of business. The company keeps a database of insurance claims by holders of auto and homeowner policies. Insurers submit those records to the database and check new applicants against it.

State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) and other critics say that consumers often don't know the database has been tapped or what's in it; that the files can include errors that go uncorrected; and that insurers even count simple inquiries that don't lead to the filing of a claim as a strike against policyholders.

Speier, who pushed a 2003 bill that would have curtailed the practice, maintains that insurers sometimes use the information to discriminate against customers. The state Insurance Department says one insurer, for example, refused to cover a San Francisco homeowner who had once asked her agent if she was covered for a clogged pipe.

Data and More Data

More frequent targets for critics have been ChoicePoint acquisitions that specialize in collecting widely dispersed public records, including legal judgments, liens and voter registration information, and then tying them to more sensitive data such as Social Security numbers and driver's licenses.

ChoicePoint bought Santa Ana-based CDB Infotek in 1996, shortly before spinning off from Equifax, and added Database Technologies Inc. in 2000. The next year, Database Technologies came under fire for having given Florida election officials a list of thousands of suspected felons that state officials used to bar people from voting.

The list was riddled with errors, and many of the accused were black Democrats. At least 1,000 people were improperly kept from voting, more than George W. Bush's margin of victory. The NAACP sued. ChoicePoint blamed Florida officials for asking for near-matches without making confirmation checks on their own. ChoicePoint settled the case in 2002 and agreed to reprocess its list of suspected ex-cons.

Although ChoicePoint's government deals generate only about 10% of revenue, Sakakeeny said, the company made the area a top priority after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the firm won a four-year, $67-million contract with the Justice Department. Local police, the FBI and other agencies are big customers, in part because laws prevent the authorities from keeping close tabs on those who aren't suspected of a crime.

"These government agencies are increasingly outsourcing various law enforcement and intelligence functions," Solove said. In a sense, he added, the government doesn't even need its own surveillance program. "It can achieve the same goal by having these companies do the work for them."

Yet ChoicePoint's government work has brought criticism from civil liberties groups.

"Individuals need to give their information to third parties in order to participate in society," Chris Hoofnagle, an attorney with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, wrote in a law journal last year. "It is unfair to cede all individuals' rights to a company that can simply hand over personal information to law enforcement."

Several foreign governments also launched investigations after ChoicePoint acquired secret information on their citizens. Mexico placed three accused middlemen under house arrest for their suspected roles in helping ChoicePoint buy the entire country's voting rolls, which are protected under federal law.

Despite the backlash, ChoicePoint has indicated that it wants to go much further in mining for information. The company has been working on a secret database prototype for the FBI. And Smith, the CEO, has pressed for the expansion of DNA collection from criminals and others, as well as for parents to take DNA samples from their children.

"In the near future, identity, so weakened by fallible representations like birth dates and Social Security numbers, will be anchored by infallible genetic markers," Smith wrote in his 2004 book "Risk Revolution."

Although such sentiments have alarmed privacy advocates, ChoicePoint has taken the most flak for the way it peddles far more workaday information.

The Nigerian fraud rings that repeatedly penetrated ChoicePoint's databases passed themselves off as legitimate small companies interested in tapping people's addresses, phone listings, Social Security numbers and credit reports.

The company stresses that it doesn't grant access to information to just anybody. But it has opened its arms much wider in recent years.

Backgrounds Exposed

The clearest case is a product called Employee Background Check, which was sold in 2003 to the general public at Sam's Club stores for less than $40. ( ChoicePoint's lead outside director, Thomas Coughlin, recently retired as vice chairman of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., where he oversaw the U.S. operations of Sam's Club.) The kit, since pulled from the market, featured many of ChoicePoint's databases and allowed customers armed with someone else's Social Security number to look up identifying information and possible criminal records.

Ostensibly aimed at employers, the product did little to weed out nosy neighbors or crooks.

The package came with a seal reading "Business License Required." But the online registration forms, which took less than half an hour to complete, didn't ask users to submit a license number, according to Pam Dixon, founder of nonprofit research group World Privacy Forum.

And though users were supposed to have the approval of purported job candidates for some searches, all ChoicePoint demanded was that customers check an electronic box marked "candidate authorization obtained?"

The company told users they might be audited, but Dixon said she bought a kit and never got so much as a phone call asking who she was.

"It was the single most insecure background check product I have ever seen in my life," she said.

In some eyes, the Sam's Club sales exemplified ChoicePoint's drive to trade wider access to its information for greater revenue.

"The public records side had really stagnated," said Aldrich, the former vice president, who now works at an employee-screening firm. Even so, she called the kit decision "a really odd thing."

CEO Smith has called for a broad discussion of how the increased flow of information can be used for good and ill.

"The electronic 'pipeline' is not the problem," he wrote. "The problem is society's continuing delay in implementing consistent, coherent standards and guidelines to monitor and protect the flow."

But by putting profit above all else, some analysts say, Smith has lost his shot at driving that conversation.

"They should have taken a stronger leadership role on the process, in who they disclose to," said Gartner Inc. financial security analyst Avivah Litan. "Companies like ChoicePoint can't see the forest for the trees."

*
Times staff writer David Colker and researchers John Tyrrell and Penny Love contributed to this report.

ChoicePoint Inc. said Tuesday, February 15 that it began sending letters to 35,000 California residents to tell them that their personal information may have been compromised by a fraud ring that obtained credit reports, Social Security numbers and other information on as many as 100,000 victims nationwide in a massive case of identity theft.

Fraud Ring Taps Into Credit Data
L.A. Times

Data theft case widens; 750 fraud victims found
MSNBC

Californians warned that hackers may have stolen their data
USA Today

More Than 70 Percent of HR Professionals Say Reference Checking is Effective in Identifying Poor Performers

(Alexandria, Va., February 3, 2005)—Nearly 40 percent of HR professionals report that over the last three years they have increased the amount of time spent on reference checking for potential employees, according to the 2005 Reference Checking Survey released by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM.)

Most organizations conduct reference and background checks as part of their screening process. Seventy-three percent of survey respondents say that reference checking is somewhat or very effective in identifying poor performers.

“Being able to identify unqualified candidates during the recruiting process saves organizations time and money,” said Susan R. Meisinger, SPHR, president and CEO of SHRM. “Employees provide the competitive edge for a successful business, making it critically important for organizations to be able to recruit the right people. With new technologies, reference and background checking has become easier to conduct and increasingly more important to organizations who want to get a complete picture of the job candidates they consider hiring.”

Ninety-six percent of organizations conduct some kind of background or reference check. Although much reference checking is conducted in-house, 52 percent of survey respondents report that their organization outsources at least part of their reference checking or verification.

Survey respondents report that reference checks have found inconsistencies in areas including certifications, eligibility to work in the United States, degrees conferred, schools attended, and malpractice or professional disciplinary action. The most common inconsistencies - found by about half of survey respondents - are inconsistencies in dates of previous employment, criminal records, former job titles, and past salaries.

Organizations are responsible for checking the references of potential employees, but also are asked to provide reference information about former employees. Due to a fear of liability, 54 percent of organizations have policies to not provide employee references. Yet, 75 percent of HR professionals believe their organization would share more information about current and former employees if there were laws clearly protecting them from legal liability.

The survey was based on 345 responses from a random sample of SHRM members.

###

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management. Representing more than 190,000 individual members, the Society's mission is to serve the needs of HR professionals by providing the most essential and comprehensive resources available. As an influential voice, the Society's mission is also to advance the human resource profession to ensure that HR is recognized as an essential partner in developing and executing organizational strategy. Founded in 1948, SHRM currently has more than 500 affiliated chapters and members in more than 100 countries. Visit SHRM Online at www.shrm.org

Pre-Employment Screening Articles

Backman fired after background check shows problems
San Jose Mercury News, CA
Arizona brass did not conduct a criminal background check on Backman before hiring him and were not aware that he had been arrested for driving under the influence...

Background checks save costly errors
The News Journal, DE
By the time a new employee takes their lunch break on the first day at work, a company has paid that person more than the cost of the background check ...

What Every Employer Should Know about Drug Testing in the Workplace

American business has a drug problem. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 8 million Americans use some type of illegal substance. As many as 73 percent of all illicit drug users in this country are employed.

Occupational Hazards
by Sandy Smith

A Gallup Survey of employees conducted by the Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace found that 37 percent of all respondents said that workplace drug use problems had increased in the last 5 years. A majority of respondents supported drug-screening tests. In general, it appears that respondents placed the greatest emphasis on drug testing for those employed in occupations where one person has direct responsibility for many.

As part of the federal government's effort to address the issue of substance abuse in the workplace, the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 was enacted as part of the omnibus drug legislation. This Act - in effect since March 18, 1989 - requires contractors and grantees of federal agencies to agree to provide drug-free workplaces as a precondition of receiving a contract or grant from a Federal agency.

According to Edward Poole, president and COO of OHS Health and Safety Services Inc., Costa Mesa, Calif., several government and private industry studies concluded that each drug user in the workplace "can cost an employer an average of $11,000-$13,000 annually." That adds up to a cost to American businesses of billions in healthcare costs, lost production time, injuries and damage to equipment and facilities. And chances are good, says Poole, that if your employer does not have a drug-free workplace policy and program, then he or she has at least one drug user on the payroll.

It Can't Happen Here

Despite studies and surveys indicating that a significant number of substance abusers hold jobs and work while under the influence, Poole points out that many employers have an "it can't happen here" attitude about substance abuse in the workplace.

"Once they get in there and implement a policy and start testing employees, they're usually very surprised by the results," he says.

Poole tells the story of one client who operated a small, local delivery service. When a representative from OHS Health and Safety Services visited the business owner, he was told repeatedly that there was no reason to conduct drug testing in that workplace. After all, the company had only 63 employees. After a couple of years of rebuffing them, the delivery service owner called OHS.

"He said, 'We're having some problems. There's something going on that's kind of strange. We want to start a drug-free workplace program,'" Poole recalls. (See sidebar on page XX for steps to create a drug-free workplace program.)

OHS helped him write up a company policy about drugs and drug use in the workplace. They posted signs stating it was a drug-free workplace, and passed out pamphlets to employees.

Forty-five days later, OHS showed up unannounced and did what's called a "sweep." He was going to test every employee in the workplace. Nine people immediately walked off the job. Says Poole, "One or two probably had deeply rooted beliefs in the right to privacy and all that crap, but it is probably safe to say that most of those nine employees would have tested positive." Out of the 54 who took the drug test, 19 tested positive for marijuana and several tested positive for cocaine as well. "The employer was shocked," says Poole, "shocked. Most employers have no clue how many employees are working under the influence."

Writing a Policy

The first step toward eliminating workplace drug and alcohol use is the establishment of a drug-free workplace policy. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) offers a Drug-Free Workplace Advisor at www.dol.gov/elaws/drugfree.htm that offers guidance on how to develop a drug- and alcohol-free workplace. According to DOL, the policy should lay the groundwork for your program and should answer several questions, including:
1. What is the purpose/goal of your program?
2. Who will be covered by your policy?
3. When will your policy apply?
4. What behavior will be prohibited?
5. Will employees be required to notify you of drug-related convictions?
6. Will your policy include searches?
7. Will your program include drug testing?
8. What will the consequences be if your policy is violated?
9. Will there be return-to-work agreements?
10. What type of assistance will be available?

The policy "spells out, in black and white, the employer's policy about drugs in the workplace. It should be explicit about what will not be tolerated," says Poole.

Once the policy is established and communicated to employees through workplace signage, take-home materials and workplace briefings, employers might want to take the next step and begin drug-testing current employees and new hires. (Poole cautions employers to determine the legality of drug testing in their state before instituting a program.)

Types of Testing

There are several types of drug-testing procedures available, including blood, urine and hair specimen testing. Poole says that blood tests are usually only used in extreme cases, such as the employee being unconscious as the result of a workplace accident and under the care of emergency room physicians or, in certain cases, as demanded by a court order. Hair specimen testing costs about $115-$150 per test nationally, Poole estimates. "Hair can indicate drug-use as far back as 90 days," says Poole. "Most drugs are detectable in urine for only 1-4 days."

Of the approximately 55 million drug tests performed in the United States each year, 90 percent are urine tests. Poole estimates the cost of urine specimen drug testing at approximately $44 per employee.

The rumors that it is relatively easy to "cheat" a drug test are highly exaggerated, says Poole. Most of those products must be ingested repeatedly for hours before the test is administered. So, even if they do work, such products would only be useful for scheduled drug tests, which is something most employers offer only to new hires.

Poole suggests that employers make offers to new employees contingent upon them passing a drug test. He also says that testing employees following accidents and near-misses is advisable, as is testing any employee you suspect to be under the influence. Again, he cautions, check with state employment and privacy laws to ensure the legality of your testing program. As for random tests, the industry standard is to always test 50 percent of the total number of employees each year.

Testing Results

Poole uses the following example to show the cost/benefit analysis of drug testing: A company with 100 employees with an annual turnover rate of 30 percent has a cost per drug test of $44. If the company tests all 30 new hires and conducts random drug tests of 50 percent of its employees, then it is conducting 80 tests per year. Add in another 20 drug tests annually, ordered as "post-accident" or due to "reasonable suspicion," for a total of 100 drug tests per year.

"At $44 per test, that means the company is investing $4,400 per year in what would be - I assure you - a very highly effective drug-free workplace program," says Poole.

He notes that in the first 3-4 months of newly instituted random drug testing of their employees, every company can expect drug "positive" rates of anywhere from 5 percent to 22 percent. Construction companies and food service tend to rank on the high end of the positive scale, he adds. Retail and office workers tend to have fewer positive drug tests.

"By the end of the first full year – at the latest – the rate of drug positives coming back on the lab reports will drop by 50 percent to 80 percent," says Poole. "Drug positive rates of 26 percent will drop to as little as 5 percent and positive rates of 5 percent will drop to as low as 1 percent."

Soon, the company that once had 100 employees that included anywhere from five or six to 24 workers who used drugs in the workplace and perhaps even dealt drugs in the workplace becomes a drug-free workplace. Company production increases and quality of products and services improve. Sick days are fewer; injuries decrease; the number of workers' compensation claims get reduced; insurance and workers' compensation premiums stabilize; and equipment and supplies stop being damaged or disappearing as frequently.

"Let's look a bit more closely at the average $4,400 annual outlay that a company of 100 likely needs to invest to reach an effective, year-around drug testing program. Based on 365 days, the hard cost of drug testing for the company dilutes to only $12.05 per day. With 100 employees, that's about 12 cents per day per employee, or less than one-half the cost today of making a local call from a corner payphone," says Poole. "Wouldn't you say that's a sound investment?"


Sidebar: Steps to a Successful Drug-Free Workplace Program

According to Edward Poole, president and COO of OHS Health & Safety Services Inc., there are 14 steps to a successful drug-free workplace program.

1. Prepare a written "drug-free workplace" policy for your legal protection and provide a copy for all employees. Have the acknowledgment of their review and understanding of it signed and dated by them and place it in their personnel file. According to Poole, 14 states have laws requiring a written drug testing policy; two states require state-approval of the policy before implementing a drug testing program. Such a policy should have the following elements: statement of purpose; coverage and implementation; scope of testing; definitions of terms used; alcohol and drug-free workplace program; alcohol policy; legal drugs defined; illegal drugs defined; education and training required for supervisors and employees; substances to be screened; procedure for the collection of specimens; initial screening and test confirmation process; test results/reporting procedure/employee's right to retest; action level for "positive" test results; additional consequences for violation of the company's drug and alcohol policy; reservation of rights; identification of substance abusers; pre-employment, random, reasonable suspicion, post-accident and return-to-duty testing procedures; consequences of a refusal to submit to testing; testing after rehire; disciplinary action; employee responsibilities under the policy and a contact person.
2. Post "We Are a Drug-Free Workplace" or similar signs in the parking gate entrance, the entrance to your building and the lobby, the coffee room and above the employee time clock. Post similar signs where job applicants can see them. (The law in two states actually requires conspicuous posting of this type.)
3. Circulate substance-abuse prevention education materials (e.g., pamphlets/videos) to all supervisors, managers and other employees once annually. A short reminder notice of your drug-free workplace company policy - and perhaps some drug-abuse facts - should be included inside pay envelopes at least once per calendar quarter.
4. Perform pre-employment drug testing on every new hire. Those testing "positive" for drugs should have their employment offer immediately rescinded no matter how qualified they might otherwise appear to be for the position and no matter how badly you need to fill the position. (The law in five states requires that any drug testing be performed post-hire only; law in one state permits pre-employment testing only in conjunction with a "comprehensive physical" exam; rescission of the job offer can be made following a confirmed positive for illicit drugs.)
5. Include a statement - "Employment subject to passing a drug test" or "We drug test all new hires" - in all help-wanted advertisements. (The law of one state requires that at least 10 days notice be given to an employee prior to his or her drug test.)
6. Randomly drug test (laws permitting) at least 50 percent of your employee base annually. Depending on the number of employees you have, perform random testing at least once monthly or every week.
7. Test an employee for "reasonable suspicion" whenever reasonable cause is justified by virtue of their display of any behavioral or physical indicators of drug-use, including a dramatic change in work performance.
8. Arrange substance-abuse awareness training for supervisors and managers at least once per year. Such training will help them to identify the indicators of drug-use among their crew and teach them the most effective methods of isolating and preventing a possible drug-use related workplace problem before it becomes a crisis for your company.
9. "Post-accident" drug test an employee whenever justified by serious injury, damaged/loss of property, or life. (At least 40 states will consider a denial of workers' compensation benefits when an accident is caused by your employee whose post-accident drug test is positive for illicit drugs. The majority of those 40 states also will consider a denial of unemployment benefits for that same reason.
10. Use only federal/state certified labs for the analysis of all specimens that are sent to a lab. Laws in five states and in one U.S. territory require that all elements of a company drug-testing program - including the choice of testing lab - strictly follow U.S. Department of Transportation guidelines.
11. Have all specimens that initially test "positive" (including those based upon results of on-site drug test devices or kits) re-tested by a certified lab.
12. Utilize the services of a medical review officer for all positive results.
13. Ensure that all test results of employees are kept strictly confidential! Inform only those with a "need to know" of final drug test results and maintain all results with strict security.
14. Impose all terms of your company's written testing policy strictly, fairly and equally with all employees.

Sidebar: Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988

As part of the federal government's effort to address the issue of substance abuse in the workplace, the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 was enacted as part of the omnibus drug legislation. This Act - in effect since March 18, 1989 - requires contractors and grantees of federal agencies to agree to provide drug-free workplaces as a precondition of receiving a contract or grant from a federal agency.

Pre-Employment Screening Articles

Live-in caretaker charged with four felony counts including armed robbery and first degree murder of 79-year-old
Authorities say this is a sad reminder for the public to always do a background check before hiring someone to do this type of work. Read article.

US financial sector warned of insider crimes: report
The study – “Insider Threat Study: Illicit Cyber Activity in the Banking and Finance Sector” – found that banks, investment firms, insurance companies, credit bureaus and others are failing to take the most basic steps such as proper employee background checks to prevent embezzlement, credit and accounting fraud and other crimes. Read report.

Local churches strive to keep sanctuaries safe from sexual predators, harm
Background checks and other implemented safeguards, long held in the secular world, are fast becoming standard practice in the religious realm. Read article.

City of Macon skipped vital step in hiring
The fiasco involving the city of Macon's Finance Director Kelly Clark, if not so painful, would end up on the bloopers show, "How not to hire a finance director." Read article.

Screeners Who Steal
One screener had four Social Security numbers and a conviction for shoplifting, and as seen on a surveillance videotape exclusively obtained by CBS News, he used his position to steal jewelry and more from airline passengers' bags. Read article.

Faculties' pasts go unchecked
The recent discovery that a respected Penn State professor was convicted of murdering three fishermen on a remote Texas inlet in 1965 has fueled a debate over background checks for faculty. Read article.

Background checks root out job seekers' tall tales

You know who you are. The job hunter who littered his resume with untruths. Or the candidate who feigned a clean criminal record.

The temptation to lie while job-hunting might be strong given the tight economy. But liars beware: More companies are using background checks to vet job applicants. Telling the truth, however tawdry, can only help you get that job.

Take this example from Barry Nadell, president of InfoLink Screening Services in California: An InfoLink client, a hotel owner, did a background check on a potential hire, revealing a prior conviction for prostitution. She wasn't hired, but not because of her illegalities. She had lied on her job application.

Companies have good reason to distrust job applicants. Thirty percent to 40 percent of candidates fudge the truth, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Remember University of Notre Dame football coach George O'Leary? He lost his job for lying on his resume about his academic and athletic background.

About 75 percent of businesses surveyed by the national outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said they have been the victim of untruthful hires. The financial hit? About $7,000 for a salaried employee; $10,000 for a midlevel worker; and $40,000 to recruit a new senior executive, according to Recruiting Times.
…

Companies, however, can't freely wander through a person's background. There are guidelines: Officials must get written permission from the applicant; they can use the information only if it specifically applies to the job; and they must give a copy of the report to the candidate if it prompts their dismissal. Did a potential hire, for example, once get convicted for assault - maybe decking a bar patron as a youth? Can't use it against him if he's applying for an engineering job.

What about an accounting candidate who declared bankruptcy? Feel free to reject that person. (Do you really want someone balancing your books who can't balance his or her own?)

Applicants must not lie about past indiscretions. But don't bring them up if you don't have to. "The first thing out of your mouth in an interview shouldn't be, 'I have bad credit,'" said Bob Banuski, president and founder of the Syracuse-based Amtek Human Resources Consultants, which has offices in Rochester.

At InfoLink, 38 percent of its searches in 2004 found problems in applicants' motor vehicle reports. An additional 23.3 percent lied about former employment. Eight percent tried to hide criminal convictions.

Businesses' fear that they will be held liable or lose money from bad hires has fueled growth in such services, Nadell added. From 1996 to 2003, the number of companies doing general background checks jumped from 66 percent to 82 percent, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Even InfoLink - a background checking company - isn't immune to fibbing job candidates. One such check revealed a warrant for a candidate's arrest. Another applicant lied about a burglary conviction.

Pre-Employment Screening Articles

BAD CHECKS
CSO - Framingham,MA,United States
More organizations are investigating criminal histories and other public records to make hiring and firing decisions. It's up to CSOs to make sure this powerful but flawed weapon doesn't backfire
Read article.

Wal-Mart to scrutinize job applicants
No. 1 retailer to announces tighter screening after workers named in sex assault case.
Read article.

CHARLES Schwab Fined for Lax Employee Screening
The New York Stock Exchange fined the San Francisco-based firm $250,000 for failing to comply with several regulations governing the hiring of employees with criminal convictions.
Read article.

Background checks rile professors
Much of the furor is fueled by the discovery last summer that college professor Paul Krueger spent four years teaching at Penn State University before the school learned that he had murdered three fishermen 40 years earlier.
Read article.

Camp counselors may face scrutiny
Some Maine officials say the state should re-examine its regulations governing summer camps following the arrest of a counselor who police say had child pornography on his home computer in Massachusetts.
Read article.

Resumes getting checked twice
From O'Leary to Cyprien, false claims are not unusual
 
By Pierce W. Huff, Staff writer
The Times Picayune, Sunday, July 18, 2004
 
Shortly after George O'Leary resigned as the football coach at Notre Dame for putting false information on his resume, Terry Don Phillips, then the athletic director at Oklahoma State, took action.
 
“After O'Leary, we sent out communication to all our coaches," said Phillips, now the athletic director at Clemson. "If there's something that's not correct on your resume . . . make us aware, so we have a chance to work it out. We had one coach come forward."
 
Glynn Cyprien wasn't that coach. He was an assistant on Eddie Sutton's staff and played a key role in helping the Cowboys reach the 2004 Final Four. Shortly after that appearance, University of Louisiana-Lafayette athletic director Nelson Schexnayder hired Cyprien as the Ragin' Cajuns' basketball coach.
 
ULL fired Cyprien on Friday for not having a bachelor's degree from a school that has accreditation recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
 
Cyprien listed a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio and bachelor's and master's degrees from Lacrosse University on his resume. He didn't graduate from UTSA, and Lacrosse is an on-line school based in Bay St. Louis, Miss., that doesn't have accreditation recognized by the Department of Education.
 
Phillips said he was contacted by Schexnayder about Cyprien before he was hired.
"We had a lengthy conversation," Phillips said. "We were flabbergasted to learn what had happened."
 
It was evident that Cyprien and ULL hadn't learned much from the scandal that rocked college football in 2001. But many institutions, including Notre Dame, changed their policies.
 
John Heisler, an associate athletic director at Notre Dame, said that before the O'Leary scandal, his university was not in the practice of checking the details of resumes. But that's not the case anymore.
 
Heisler said Notre Dame has internal and external checks of resumes, and its sports information department always double-checks the details of all press releases involving the hiring of coaches. Athletic director Kevin White and the athletic staff verify the information listed on applications, and the human resources department authenticates degrees and academic information.
 
"We learned that things we used to take for granted and took as accurate, now we're not taking anything for granted anymore," Heisler said.
 
LSU athletic director Skip Bertman said his school also learned from the O'Leary scandal.
 
"When the George O'Leary thing happened, at the next staff meeting I brought out everybody . And one of the topics that zoomed to the very head was for everyone to check their resume," Bertman said. "You know, like I haven't checked mine in years. Check your resume. Go back and really look it over, whoever you are. Fix it so there's nothing -- and I mean absolutely nothing -- with the emphasis being there's nothing in the resume that can get you the job that's more important than if you have lied on the resume. If that's the case, just make sure that everything is verifiable, and I think most of our coaches did that. The O'Leary thing was an eye-opener for a lot of people."
There is no full-proof way to catch every lie in a resume, even with the heightened awareness about past false background scandals. But schools and employers now are convinced that intensive background checks are a must for every new job candidate.
 
"I mean it costs a lot of money, but it's something that we feel is absolutely necessary," Bertman said. "We started that just about George O'Leary time. We always did some background check, but now we have done one of these professional background checks, where the (prospective coach) has to give you the right to do it. They have to sign off on it, and it's very personal. It's expensive, but obviously it's worth it. So no coach in the LSU athletic department can hire an assistant, not to mention a head coach, until human resources hires a firm and does the background check. It usually takes seven to 10 days, so even if they want to hire the person they have to wait until we're finished."
 
LSU human resources director David Hurlbert said more and more companies are finding that it pays to do their homework when it comes to new hires.
 
"I think it's fair to say that there's an increased interest in this area," Hurlbert said. "I think you'll find that with even private-sector employers. People seem to be spending a lot more money and a lot more time on background checks, not just for degrees but for other things too."
 
Heisler of Notre Dame said he's not sure why some coaches lie about their backgrounds.
"That's hard to say," her said. "Part of it is just the competitiveness in the positions. There is a fine line sometimes between having done the required course work and maybe actually receiving the degree."
 
But Barry Nadell, the president of InfoLink Screening Services in Chatsworth, Calif., said people stretch the truth on their resumes to get jobs they want.
 
"They don't believe people like us (employment services) are going to find that information, and so they do it," said Nadell, whose company's list of clients includes the Paramount Pictures, the University of Southern California and Pepperdine University. "We tell people that they are better off being truthful, because often times they'll still get the job by being truthful."
 
The statistics show that coaches are not alone when it comes to stretching the truth on their resumes. In a study done by Ward Howell International Inc. of 258 human resource executives who reported discovering instances of credential falsification or misrepresentation, 62 percent said they had found fabricated academic credentials, 43 percent found discrepancies in compensation histories and 25 percent said they had come across cases where a criminal record was omitted, according to Business Wire.
 
According to research done by corporate recruiters and the Society for Human Resource Management, one of four candidates materially misrepresent their educational attainment. Less than 15 percent of all employment applications have educational credentials verified because of the difficulty of getting information required in a timely fashion from multiple sources, according to a story in Certification Magazine by Martin Bean.
 
Nadell said of the thousands of people that have given the approval for background checks this year, 24 percent have had discrepancies when calling past employers, 8.4 percent have had criminal convictions, 39 percent have had situations ranging from minor to major traffic violations and 5.3 percent have falsified or stretched the truth about their education.
 
In her book "Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life," Sissela Bok writes: "Some people may not understand what a serious thing it is. When a person does this, after a while they begin to believe it (resume inflation). It obviously hurts institutions and the individuals too." 
 

Reason for Leaving a Prior Job Is the Information Most Frequently Fabricated by Job Seekers, According to Global Survey of Executive Recruiters. Read more...

Summer’s Here – Who's Coaching Our Children
Coaches can become some of the most significant figures in children’s lives. As with any other occupation, some are better than others. However, none should be allowed to become dangerous. Read more...

Public School Audits Background Checks
Rules for background checks on Portland Public School custodians will be reviewed after a worker was arrested on charges of killing her former husband. Read more...

Pre-Employment Screening Articles

Changes expected for spa workers
The Illinois Legislature is pushing forward new regulations that would require background checks and fingerprinting of massage therapists as the state looks to clamp down on prostitution rings using massage therapy as a front. Read article

Couple sues Special Olympics over their child's rape
A couple sued the Special Olympics on Thursday, claiming it should have conducted a more thorough background check on a volunteer who raped their disabled son. Read article

Carsonville honors volunteers who get background check
Field- trip chaperones, foster grandparents, room moms and basketball coaches are about to become card-carrying, certified school volunteers. Carsonville Elementary School is starting a program to thank volunteers who go through a criminal background check. Read article

Cheap Background Checks often Miss Offenders

The Miami Herald
By Greg Burns, Chicago Tribune Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Apr. 11 - Employers worried about crime, terrorism and liability are embracing a new breed of online services for screening job candidates, but these low-budget background checks don't always check out. The cheapest ones routinely fail to identify criminals, performing such superficial reviews that serious offenders can get perfectly clean reports, critics say.

Even when these services uncover criminal records, the information often is incomplete and unreliable. And with instant checks costing as little as $10 apiece, the trampling of privacy rights and fair-hiring laws can become as simple as a point and a click, the critics say.
While the private background-check business has a few big players, hundreds of upstarts have emerged in recent years to cash in on the nation's heightened security concerns, according to Shawn Bushway, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who has studied the booming industry.

Some 467 separate companies offer background checks on the Internet, Bushway said. And in at least some instances, they provide little more than false assurances to those vetting everyone from truck drivers to child-care providers.

"It's absolutely impossible to know who these companies are," he said. "They're not responsible to anybody about anything." In conducting his research, Bushway obtained the criminal records of 120 current parolees in the state of Virginia, then submitted their names to a popular online background check company -- he won't say which one. Sixty came back showing no criminal record at all, and many of the other reports were so scrambled their offenses scarcely could be identified, he said. "They look like different people."

The Chicago Tribune conducted a similar spot-check six weeks ago, submitting the names and birth dates of 10 Illinois offenders whose sentences were reported in the media for crimes ranging from drunk driving and fraud to possession of child pornography. InstantPeopleCheck.com found no criminal records for any of them in its $9.95-per-person statewide search. It flagged one as a sex offender, based on his entry in the state's free online registry, but included no corresponding description of his guilty plea a year ago for soliciting a juvenile prostitute.

The service, chosen at random from the Internet, won't disclose the identity of its owners or employees, and lists its mailing address as a post office box in an Anchorage retail mall. Through an unsigned e-mail, InstantPeopleCheck said its search fulfilled the criteria set forth on its Web site. Indeed, the company promised only a cursory check and disclosed that it couldn't guarantee the accuracy or extent of the results. Still, even the simplest searches convey a sense of scope and timeliness that they rarely if ever possess, said Lynn Peterson, president of the PFC Information Services Inc. research firm. Some vendors, she noted, effectively check only for current inmates of state prisons. Their reports indicate "no record" even for those on probation or serving time in a county jail.

Peterson's company specializes in more extensive screenings that involve tracing the addresses and names used by a subject over the years, then hiring researchers known as "runners" to track down public records at each location. "You can do a darn decent background check for a couple of hundred dollars," she said. A thorough screening almost always involves sending runners to the courthouses, noted John Long, chief executive of the publicly held First Advantage Corp., one of the largest background check services: "These instant searches as a general rule of thumb are a bunch of [nonsense]." Even as the rise of the Internet and inexpensive computer databases has transformed the business, verifying and interpreting the mass of available data remains the key, he said. "The Web makes people think they have a lot of information, and they don't." Long estimates that of the more than 400 background check vendors, approximately 100 are what he would consider "reputable."

The privately owned InstantPeopleCheck.com took nearly six months to develop its databases before launching its business about two years ago, according to the unsigned e-mails sent from the service. It offers more thorough and time-consuming searches that could have picked up the prior offenses of the criminals it failed to identify for $9.95, the e-mails claimed. The large, publicly held Choicepoint Inc. also defends the value of the online instant background checks it performs for fees starting at $25 or so, and a spokesman says it is possible to get a meaningful result without any gumshoe work.

Nevertheless, the boom in inexpensive online screenings is fueling a backlash among those who believe the privacy rights of workers are being compromised. No one has established widely accepted guidelines for how the information should be used, labor advocates say. And so much data is available that some, inevitably, is inaccurate and misleading. "The incompleteness usually works to the detriment of the worker," said Mike Ingrao, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department.

Employers, for their part, are stepping up efforts to protect their companies and workforces. That was the case at Eli Lilly & Co., which started requiring criminal checks for employees of its outside vendors in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A Lilly spokeswoman said the Indiana-based drugmaker uses much more sophisticated tools than the typical instant online checks. "Our general stance is always that we use the best available technology," she said. But even so, Lilly banned from its premises at least one technician who was mistaken for a relative with a criminal record. The technician got his post back eventually, and "the system is working well," the spokeswoman said.

In fact, background checks present a thicket of conflicting legal issues for employers. At the same time that new rules requiring background checks for certain jobs are proliferating, existing law already imposes some stringent requirements on how those checks can be conducted.

The longstanding Fair Credit Reporting Act, for instance, requires employers to use up-to-date information for screening job candidates. It also says the subjects must give their permission for a background review and receive copies of any records used in employment decisions. The rise of quick online checks makes those rules tougher to enforce, according to the University of Maryland's Bushway. Consequently, a job candidate might never get a chance to explain, for example, that an arrest resulted in an acquittal, he said. "In most cases, you're not going to be hired, and you're not told why."

Performing background checks can leave companies open to allegations of discrimination or defamation. Yet failing to perform background checks can lead to liability for the acts of criminals on the payroll -- so-called "negligent hiring and retention." Balancing those conflicts "puts employers squarely on the horns of a very difficult legal dilemma," said labor and employment attorney Gerald D. Skoning, a senior partner at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago.

The risks of negligent hiring were demonstrated tragically in a recent case involving a Chicago native murdered in her California home by a carpet cleaner with a long criminal history. The murderer went to prison, and the surviving spouse of Dr. Kerry Spooner-Dean won an $11 million judgment in 2000 that put the carpet company out of business. "The verdict sends a message," said Paul D. Scott, plaintiff's attorney in the case against the company, which performed no screening. "A background check would have helped."

The lesson, however, is that even a sketchy check can reduce liability in such circumstances. As Skoning put it: "They're definitely better than doing nothing. It's a cheap insurance policy."

That reality is small consolation to Spooner-Dean's mother, Mary Spooner of Grayslake, who in the wake of her daughter's death vowed to push for wider use of criminal background checks. She quickly recognized that many businesses still were skeptical of the need for checks, or too eager to seize the cheapest option, she said. "Those $9.95ers," she lamented. "There's so many holes." After a while, Spooner, a dietician at Rush University Medical Center, grew resigned. "It became a very frustrating experience," she recalled. "I just kind of gave up on the whole thing."

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© 2004, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. FADV, CPS, LLY,

Pre-Employment Screening Articles

TEACHERS behaving badly
Deseret News - Salt Lake City,UT,USA
State law requires prospective and license-lapsing teachers to be fingerprinted and undergo a criminal background check, either through colleges of education ...

BACKGROUND check form irks library's volunteers
San Diego Union Tribune - San Diego,CA,USA
The background check for every new county employee and volunteers was initiated and approved by the Board of Supervisors last year. ...

SCRUTINY for school volunteers
New Britain Herald - New Britain,CT,USA
It's very similar to the process you have when you hire staff. You do a background check," Binkowski said. "It's a preventative kind of approach.". ...