CONDUCTING AN EMPLOYEE BACKGROUND CHECK, NO MATTER THE POSITION

These last few weeks have really been rough. If you work LP for the holidays you know what I’m talking about. It was a constant battle to keep merchandise in the store and on the shelf. Not to mention the onslaught of GL claims, customer issues and of course internal theft. Silver lining; it’s all behind us now and we can look forward to starting off a new year and close out 2015 on a high note. As you look ahead to 2016 and the new staff you plan on hiring, I would implore you to conduct an employee background check on any new hires. I feel encouraged to share a story with you all in hopes of encouraging you to always run a pre-employment screening before bringing anyone new into your stores.

A new regional manager had just taken over the area and there were several stores that had General Manager vacancies. Either the internal candidate were not interested in moving up, or there were some issues that prevented a promotion, so she was left scrambling trying to fill these openings in some of our highest volume stores. The Regional Manager did what any savvy manager would do; she relied on her network of previous employees and employers and scoured for talent. It wasn’t long before she had found a candidate for one of our stores that she had worked with years ago. In such a rush to get the position filled, the Regional Manager elected to bypass the pre-employment screening and bring the candidate in immediately. Surely, she trusted this man’s character enough to do so. Things were great for about 6 months. 

The LP department began receiving copious amounts of anonymous tips from this one particular store. All seemed to involve the General Manager in some form of fraud. There were allegations of payroll fraud, manipulation of financial documents, and even theft. How could this be? The RM vouched for this guy. He was touted as a District Manager level candidate due to his experiences. He was such a strong candidate, even bypassing an employee background check. So what was going on?

I was assigned the case to investigate and it didn’t take much to uncover a literal pile of crap. Once I began interviewing supervisors and managers, I started to develop a clear pattern of his behavior. This General Manager would take every Friday, Saturday and Sunday off, while maintaining a schedule that showed he was in the store. Interviewing supervisors, I found out that he threatened to fire anyone who spoke out against him, even forcing some managers to lie to the Regional Manager regarding his presence in the store. In addition, after some financial investigations, we determined that he was manipulating the store sales on the weekly PL report, to show greater sales and profitability; increasing his bonus potential. This, folks, is fraud. 

The proverbial nail in the coffin came when a part time sales associate contacted me directly. The employee was a retired police officer who sold power tools part time for us. He claimed to have witnessed the GM steal an entire socket set and felt it was his duty to report this. Long story short, the claim was investigated and proven. Our investigation also uncovered thousands upon thousands of dollars of theft by this General Manager in just the few short months he was employed. When the case came to a close, and police were contacted, the detective assigned to the case asked, “Don’t you guys run an employee background check?”

Surely this General Manager, who was spoken so highly of by the Regional Manager, couldn’t have any type of criminal record, could he? Of course he did. He had been arrested nearly a dozen times for shoplifting, check fraud and several other crimes. If he had gone through the pre-employment screening process, we could have saved the company countless thousands of dollars. This set a new policy in our company and as a direct result of this case, no one, not even the CEO could waive the employee background check requirement for new hires. 

For more information about Background Checks, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547

Building A Better Team Is Easier When You Use A Background Check Company

You may not know this, but hiring the right people for your business is EASY! That’s right, everyone who applies will always fill in application information honestly. They never leave gaps in employment, they tell you their entire education background and obviously they will never lie about whether they are re-hirable for a previous job. Would they omit facts about a criminal history? Certainly not! They will tell you about that criminal record, because they know your business might do background checks and find out, right? While we are on the topic, resumes are just as trustworthy. Why would anyone embellish a resume just to get a job? Who is going to be creative about a job title, isn’t that kind of senseless? Awards they have received? Can’t you track down if they weren’t the school Valedictorian? I am being sarcastic in all of this for a reason. People DO lie on applications and on resumes in order to get a job. How pervasive is the problem? “According to a 2014 CareerBuilder survey, fifty-eight percent of hiring managers said they’ve caught a lie on an application; one-third (33 percent) of these employers have seen an increase in resume embellishments post-recession.” (Source; CareerBuilder.com) A professional background check company can provide you with the information on an applicant that he or she may fail to “remember” when completing that job application.

A background check company can uncover information that an applicant may fail to let you know about when they apply for a job with you. Do you require a certain type of degree or certification for a job? A pre-employment screening can validate that someone graduated with that particular diploma. Will the job require driving? It could be helpful to know if the applicant has a clean driving record. What about a credit history? Is the person you are considering for a position financially stable? It may be important for you to know that the person who is going to have access to client credit card information does not have potential credit problems himself. Conducting background checks will help to ensure you are hiring people who are honest in providing information you need to make intelligent hiring decisions. 

Having experience in my previous position in retail as a Loss Prevention Manager and in my current position as a shift supervisor in a university library, I have combed through hundreds of applications. I have first-hand experience in seeing “embellishments” and “employment gaps”. I also know what it is to be in crunch time and you have to hire a new person, but you have to go through a lot of applications and resumes. It can be easy to give a benefit of a doubt to what may be an omission. This is especially true when you see an application or resume that at first glance looks very impressive. A background check company can help protect you when you may have been lulled into a false sense of security over a candidate’s application. As the saying goes, “Looks can be deceiving”. I recognize that even those who have had a checkered past need an opportunity to turn their life around.  If someone is honest, even about their criminal history employee background checks can confirm a person’s honesty. While I applaud employers who are willing to hire someone who may have experienced problems in their lives, I still think it is prudent to place these new hires in a position that will not put a company at risk.  I would not put someone with a prior DUI conviction in a position to drive a company vehicle, at least for a while. Someone that has been convicted of embezzlement would not work in my cash office or at a cash register. I might consider them for a freight stocking position or as a cart attendant to start off.  

Hiring the right person for the job should always be a priority. Really knowing who that person is that you are considering for a job can be difficult.  A background check company will give you the confidence that your candidate would truly be a good fit for your team. Let employee background checks help you hire the right people to staff your business.

For more information on a background check company, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 
     

FOR BUSINESSES LARGE AND SMALL, A PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENING IS A MUST

Hiring sometimes can be like a box of chocolates; you never know who you’re going to get. You trawl the sea of candidates and strike it rich with a quality candidate, or you can get shot in buttocks with a dud. This is of course the case if you’re not utilizing an employee background check.

My mama always said that good help is hard to find. I never realized how true that statement was until I became a manager of a retail store. It is truly impossible to find someone that cares as much for my business as I do. Finding that person takes a whole lot of work, as I’m sure you are very much aware. What makes it even more difficult is weeding out the bad apples before they even make it into your store. That’s why a pre employment screening is a must for any business.

About 15 years ago my dad opened his own business, a small seafood restaurant. It wasn’t much back then and with a little help from family, it was running very well. Fast forward 15 years later and it’s strange to think about how slow those times really were (and we thought we were busy back then, too!!) I also own a small stake in the business now and we have to rely on a small staff. One of the challenges we faced when we first started hiring folks from the outside was how to properly screen them. We didn’t want to hire criminals and we definitely wanted people that were going to be good for business, not the other way around.

Working full time in the Loss Prevention industry, I knew just how important it was to run an employee background check, prior to hiring anyone. I actually had to convince my dad that people lie. All the time. He prefers to see the good in people. Great characteristic, but bad for business. Every time we’d hire someone, I’d go down to the local police department, pay some outrageous fee and have them run a criminal background check for me. It was a bit time consuming, but we knew we were hiring people that, statistically, were less likely to harm the business. While you won’t prevent all forms of employee theft, a simple pre-employment screening will help to minimize the risk and provide you with some peace of mind knowing you are hiring the right person.

Fast forward a few more years and today, we source our employee background checks to a third party, which saves us a ton of hassle and a few dollars. To this day, we have only had 1 employee steal from us (I’ll save that story for another time). It still amazes my dad when a clean cut candidate comes in and really impresses us, but fails the pre-employment screening. He’ll come around to the dark side eventually and realize there are people out there that want nothing more than to steal from you, but until then, we will continue to use pre employment screenings to verify anyone we bring into our family business; you should too.

For more information about Employee Background Checks, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547

The Cost Of Background Checks

Some businesses choose not to perform any employee background checks on their potential candidates. They call the former employers that are listed, and perhaps the lineup of references given, and make their decision based on this. This could be perfectly fine, except for the fact that people will and do lie on their resumes every day. They exaggerate their previous work experience, or they fail to list specific employers because they did not leave that job on good terms. They claim to have never been terminated from any previous job, but truthfully, they’ve only listed the few they left from voluntarily.  Don’t even get me started on references. Unless they are willing to just hand you their cell phone and let you randomly call their contacts, those hand-picked people they give you have most likely already been coached on what to tell you. You need the assistance of a proper background check company to really verify all the information this person has provided. When you look at all the costs associated with running a small business, paying for a quality pre-employment screening is well worth the investment.  

I was talking to a friend that runs a small chain of convenience stores and here are a few of her hiring horror stories:

*A store kept getting broken into during the middle of the night. The criminal kept using the landscaping stones around the parking lot to break the glass out of the front door. Then they would go in and steal cartons of cigarettes from behind the counter. They seemed to know exactly how much time they had to get in and get out before the alarm would sound and alert the authorities. It turned out to be an employee that knew the alarm would activate in forty-five seconds, so he knew how quick he needed to be.

*My friend got an anonymous phone call tipping her off that an employee was selling boxes of merchandise out the back door of the store. They were supposedly selling some damaged products and some overstock items just to get it out of the store, but the employee was pocketing the money.  

*One day she was on her way in early to complete some paperwork at one of the stores and came up on a guy on a bicycle. As she drove past him, she noticed he had a plastic bag with her store’s logo on it. When she arrived at the store, she found the back door had been jimmied open. Then it dawned on her that guy she saw was a new clerk that they had hired.

When she looks back at all the time and money spent on dealing with these internal theft issues, she wonders why it took so long to decide to start using a background check company to weed out these people. No matter how good they are at storytelling, a pre-employment screening will tell you the truth about a possible job candidate.  Employee background checks are worth the cost when you consider what you could be paying for later if they turn out to be a crook. They could lie about their education level, their job experience, the reason they left former employers, and more. These could factor in to your decision on who to hire for your opening. It would be terribly wrong to hire someone based on the wrong data, and overlook a more qualified person that told the truth. People can fool you in an interview, but they can’t fool a background check company.  

For more information on background checks, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547

Who Are The People In Your Office Space? Background Checks Can Ease Employee Concerns

I remember a certain children’s show when I was little that I loved. It had puppets and people interacting and having fun.  It had educational lessons, I learned about counting from a friendly vampire and episodes were “brought to you by the letter (you fill in the blank)…” . There was catchy music that caught my attention too, one song was about “rubber ducky” and the other was about “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” As I have grown over the years, I still recall these memories, but I have changed the words to the “Who are the people in your neighborhood song” to fit my time as a Loss Prevention Manager. My version goes something like, “A criminal is a person in your company, in your company, in your c-o-m-p-a-n-y, oh a criminal is a person in your company, a person that you meet each day!”  I changed the words to fit my day so sometimes it was a criminal employee and other times a shoplifter. However I re-worded the song, it always made me laugh. I kind of do that to myself, much to the chagrin of my wife (she does not think I am as funny as I think I am).  While this is funny to me, there is an element of truth to it. Who ARE the people in your company? Who is that person sharing an office space with their co-workers?  Did you conduct a pre-employment screening of your staff members before bringing them on board? If so, how thorough was that screening or background check? If not, you need to ask yourself what you really know about that person.

I know what you are thinking, “I don’t need to have anyone do background checks on my employees, I called their references before I hired them”. I have a couple of concerns I would like to point out about this strategy. First, if the reference was a former employer most employers today can only confirm if an employee worked for them and what dates they worked there.They may tell you if the employee is rehireable or not. In order to avoid legal issues most employers will not discuss the quality of the employees work or workplace issues they may have had while employed. All you are left with is a very innocuous report that tells you little about your prospective new hire. Are the references you called personal references? OK, let’s be serious for a moment, are the personal references you have on your resume people that may not like you or have worked with you and would not have good things to say? How are you sure you aren’t calling the prospective employee’s mom (not too many mom’s out there are going to bad-mouth their kid)? An employee background check done professionally will uncover criminal history, verify school or education information, and validate employment history and addresses. A pre-employment screening may also be used to get driving record information if the employee would be in the position to have to drive a company vehicle or even use their own car in the execution of their job responsibilities.  

If you still aren’t convinced of the need for pre-employment screening, let me share one case in which an employer is involved in a lawsuit, in part, for failing to conduct a background check that resulted in one employee injuring another. From an article in Littler.com, by Jennifer Mora, September 16, 2015, “State Appellate Court Considers Employer’s Duty to Conduct Criminal Background Checks”, the writer reports on a case in which a temporary staffing agency placed a plaintiff in a supervisory position at a rice mill and he was assaulted one night by another worker who had been hired by the staffing agency who had become insubordinate and assaulted the plaintiff. The plaintiff suffered damage to his teeth and shoulder. The article goes on to say that the allegation against the staffing agency is that they failed to conduct a background check on the assaulting employee. The assaulting employee stated in pre-employment paperwork he had never been convicted of a felony, but his criminal record reflected prior misdemeanor convictions which included assault.

By conducting employee background checks you don’t have to wonder, “Who is the person in your neighborhood?” Sing another tune like, “Happy days are here again”. Keep your workplace safe and avoid possible legal problems. Look into the benefits of background checks.

For more information on background checks, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547