The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments about the post 9/11security checks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California.   According to the article in the article on the website for KUOR Public Radio, in California, the case involves the issue of recurring background checks at this world famous facility.

Employees who had background checks conducted on them when they were first employment candidates at the JPL, were after September 11, 2001 required to undergo additional and more contemporary background checks. Twenty-Eight scientists refused and they were facing dismissal.  The California Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in and called the new order for background checks a “grand inquisition.”   So that was the end of the additional background checks.

Until now.  Or, rather, the summer when the Supreme Court will hear the case.   It should be interesting as on one hand some of the legal issues revolve around doing recurring background checks.  However, the JPL wanted to add additional background searches to the preemployment screening program.  Background searches the scientists didn’t undergo when they first came on board.   Some of the new background checks including employee finances, emotional stability, and drug and alcohol use.

Like I said, an interesting case.

There is an ongoing controversy in several states about whether or not employers should run credit reports s part of the background checks they use in their preemployment screening programs.   I have posted some thoughts on this subject in a recent blog,  Controversy Over Credit Reports as Background Checks.

Some critics of the credit report as a background check contest that this is a draconian practice, as it inhibits many skilled and otherwise qualified employment candidates from finding jobs.  They contest that in this economic downturn where the job market is tight as it is, it is one more obstacle to finding employment they will often fail to hurdle.  They claim that job applicants are being penalized unnecessarily for personal misfortune in a  bad economy.     Some contest the practice of conducting practices is illegal, while others claim there is no evidence that discloses those with poor credit are a greater risk to embezzle or to commit some other form of office theft.

These are all valid points.   As one of my own recent critics contested, I am obviously advocating credit reports because Corra Group is just in it for the money.  Well, yes, but more significantly, we are determined to furnish the services requested from current and future clients.  These are employers.  Many have been in business for quite some time.  There is really no need to “sell,” them them employment credit reports as the great majority make the request of their own volition.   We will supply them with employment credit reports.

I admit there are no studies performed on the relation between credit reports and avoiding employee theft.   The evidence is empirical, meaning this is what employers have been telling us and other background searching agencies for quite some time.   This has been their standard practice for decades in some places.   Again,  we don’t need to sell this to them,  although we admittedly promote all of our products and services.   We are not shy about our marketing efforts or what we provide.

All this being said, I wanted to pass on to all potential employers and critics of this process comments that have arise unprompted from  two clients, recently.   Both claimed they have hired people, thinking they were good candidates.  Neither client ran credit reports as part of their preemployment screening.   Both regretted that choice.  One cited potential theft, or more to the point, actual theft on the part of one employee with substance abuse habits and lousy credit.  He was to discover this later.  Both clients cited the time and effort they had to spend answering phone calls form creditors for their bad credit employees.  They complained of the paperwork involved with dealing with wage garnishments and responded to letter from creditors.   Took up their time, cost them manpower and extra money. They were not happy.

So no matter which way you come down on the argument about employment credit reports, if you believe the other side lacks valid points then you are sadly mistaken.   As an job candidate, you may feel slighted for being penalized for having bad credit.   As an employer, you may well believe you are in your rights to conduct credit checks on all potential hires.

Like most things in life, we would like to see it in simple terms.  It’s not.   And that is the only thing that is clear about the matter.

It’s a tough job market and competition for what few jobs there are is fierce.   According to the Los Angeles Times, the different amusement parks around Southern California have had record turnouts at their job fairs.    This would  include such iconic amusement destinations as the Disney parks, Six Flags, and Universal Studios.

Thousand of job applicants have shown up in search of employment.  Usually these are students off for the summer or who have recently graduated and need a gig to tide them over.   But now the list of job applicants includes white collar workers, IT people,  construction guys.   With unemployment in California reaching more than 16% people need work.  And work is hard to come by in this rotten economy.

Since we are a nation where industry determines a job candidate’s qualities and eligibility for his position by judging his career track, one has to wonder what a job at, say, Disneyland would do.  Not an executive position, but a kid’s job.  How does that look on your background checks and preemployment screening report when the employment verification verifies that you spent a few months working as Minnie Mouse?   At a time when you can’t account for a couple of months of downtime it would have to be disturbing for the recruiter to gaze upon an executive level resume and see that you were Dopey  in the fireworks pageant.

It seems that we don’t make allowance for time off or time spent exploring other career opportunities, yet alone trying to survive when we are out of work.   There are times when putting food on the table, supplementing savings so your money doesn’t run out is more important than having a consistent career track.  Especially when that alleged career track has been abrogated by a nearly unprecedented economic downtown, and not only a shortage of job but a cycle when certain formerly high paying jobs are no longer relevant.  Or the industry has either obsolete or the remaining jobs have been relegated to Timbuktu.

We have been warning employers about hiring undocumented workers for a couple of years now.  Hiring workers you may suspect as being illegal or undocumented, choose your own preferential language, can lead expensive fines, business shutdowns and public embarrassment.  There are more than a few examples out there.

I have blogged about this before.  For one such blog, see Arizona Sues First Employer for Hiring Undocumented Workers.

But here is a case where the employer was just sentenced to ten years imprisonment for hiring illegal workers.  Ten years.  You may think of it as justice, you may think of it as unfair.  But the main thing to think about is that it doesn’t happen to you.    According to BusinessBrief.com, , a federal appeals court has affirmed the sentencing of Richard Rosenbaum to ten years in jail.  Rosenbaum was convicted of knowingly hiring undocumented workers and in the course of doing so,  he defrauded the government by not paying his Social Security benefits and Medicare benefits.   The feds claim that Rosenbaum and his company cheated the IRS out of $16million.

Look, this is a lousy economy and there are plenty of documented workers out there who are in need of a job.    Maybe they weren’t willing to work for less wages or to perform menial work before.  But with this economic meltdown, my how things have changed.  People are without jobs and need to find something.

If you, the employer, thinks you are getting away cheap by hiring undocumented workers, think again.   Massive fines, business closures.  And a prison sentence.   Realize the IRs is now getting into the act, as they are cracking down on those who defy the law and try to cheat on paying employment taxes.

So  run background checks.  Check out your employment candidates.  Run the E-Verify, the I-9.   Conduct a Social Security Trace to verify that your job candidate is working under a valid social security number.  His social security number.  In short, check them out, before you hire.

All right, so this is really tongue in cheek.  Well, sort of.   Having recently read an article on Yahoo News, entitled Marijuana Use By Seniors Goes Up As Boomers Age,  I couldn’t help but wonder what most employers would do if they find out through preemployment drug tests that their more senior executives are huffing on the bong, after work.   Does it matter?   And if so, how do you deal with it?  Do you deal with it the same way as you would deal with a younger job candidate?

Imagine as an employer thinking to yourself, “well he brought in umpteen millions of business, is highly respected in this industry, but he smokes pot when he gets home.”  So what do you do?

Suppose there is a zero tolerance drug policy.  Do you let your Senior Vice President go for smoking marijuana on his or her on time?  Interesting questions.   As more employers are instituting drug tests as part of their preemployment screening program, this may actually become an issue.   I write this of course with the assumption that your senior job applicant his past all other background checks and has neither state criminal records or federal criminal records, largely white collar criminal records in his history.

I wrote this also with the understanding that your senior executives are sharing doobies with the younger members of the staff, during the work hours.   I guess the interesting question is does pot use matter all that much?  And to whom?   I have had one staffing group in the healthcare industry tell me of all the background checks they run on nurses and healthcare workers, the one they care about the least is where is shows positive on the drug test for marijuana.   The one client said to me, “if I had to eliminate all the nurses smoking pot, I wouldn’t have enough job candidates to staff a small medical office yet alone a hospital.”  This may be hyperbole, but certainly he was making a point.

And then what happens in a state like California where pot is all but legal.  At least if your job candidate has a legal permit allowing him to smoke marijuana for medical reasons, then can the employer fire him if he drug test shows positive for marijuana.   Hard to say.  Whenever I have asked the question, people seem to hem and haw, but no one really seems to know the answer.  At least with regard to the people I spoke to about it.

Meanwhile, as the economy attempts to turn around and more boomers remain in the workforce for longer periods, either because they don’t want to retire or can’t afford to retire, then the drug habits most picked up on the sixties are posing whole new issues about drug tests.  I would think.

Alot of employers conduct a very thorough and comprehensive series of background checks and part of their preemployment screening program.   Others try to cut costs and make assumptions that may come back to bite them.   Assumptions in this world can lead a business to ruin.  If not to ruin, then they can be very costly mistakes.

If you are hiring an employment candidate who for the position must have obtained a college education of post-graduate degree, then make sure he actually had one.    Many job applicants lie about their education, especially during tough economic times when jobs are scarce and competition is fierce.   In hopes that they can somehow slip through unnoticed, employment candidates will list a degree when they only attended for a year or two.   Or, in some cases, they never went to the school, but thought it would be a good idea to list it, anyway, as being their Alma Mater.   Some post it because they believe it is an obscure school, and some post it because it is a large school and believe their lack failing to attend will somehow be lost in the shuffle.

Some of the repercussions are obvious.  Some are not.  Your job applicant needs special skill sets that are sometimes attainable only by qualifying for a college degree or post-graduate work.   Your associative team is depending on his to know his.  You clients believe he is qualified.  To find out otherwise, is to invite embarrassment and possible costly litigation, if your employee should screw up royally.   So be sure to run education verifications as part of your background checks.

Same holds true for Motor Vehicle Driving Records, or MVRs.   If your employee drives for you, then you can be held responsible for any of their accidents that occur during business hours.   MVRs assist you in determining substance abuse and other bad behavior patterns.   Motor Vehicle Driving Records are an essential background search these days.  For the few bucks it cost, it can save a lot of aggravation.  And money.

Check them out before you hire.

Employees will steal from you.   This is no secret.   Some employees will steal the small stuff like pens and paper.    Others will steal the more important things, like proprietary information and sensitive databases.   These are the things that can be embarrassing and costly, if stolen.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, a security guard was in cahoots with robbers who attacked the armored van on three different occasions.  On two occasions, the robber were unsuccessful, but the third time they made off with $170,000.   The ssecurity guard was part of the scheme, rendering what one defense attorney referred to as a “stupid and absurd robbery attempt” operation an inside job.  The security guard supplied the robbers with the schedule, the routes, and the amount of cash the van would be carrying.

Apparently, there was some comedy to the stupidity and the clumsiness of the robbers in this case.  But inother cases, less dramatic cases, when your employee makes off with sensitive databases or proprietary information, or company cash, it is hardly a laughing matter.   Losses can be grievous as evidence by different instances where employees set themselves up as shell corporations and siphoned off millions of dollars.

The best way to help prevent employee theft is by conducting thorough and vigorous background checks.  Not just criminal records, but other background searches, like the Motor Vehicle Records Search, or MVR, and Credit Reports, which will help you reveal personal character and behavioral characteristics.   In this terrible economy, especially, employees in trouble with creditors are more prone to make desperate moves.  People who normally wouldn’t steal make be tempted.    Conducting MVR’s and credit reports in addition to criminal records searches go a long way in determining character, in telling an employer what kind of straits they job candidate is in.

In an economic downturn, job applicants may be indulging in substance abuse, and a drug test or the MVR records for Driving While Intoxicated will provide an indication.   Then there is the issue of credit, replete with foreclosures, past due accounts, closed accounts, and account put into collections.  the credit report will help determine whether if you hire an employment candidate whether you must consider creditors garnishing his wages.  This means extra paperwork for you.

And then there is the matter of theft.   No employer needs it.  Now now, especially, when every business is struggling to stay afloat and needs every dollar it has.   So check them oiut before you hire.

I was reading a recent article about how WorkSafe in Australia  will be going to more than 40,000 employers to educated their employees on workplace violence and workplace bullies.   It is a pretty daunting task and one that takes awhile, as they interview staffers and provide training.

This decision comes after one poor soul was driven to suicide by workplace bullies.   Of course there is no end to workplace violence, in general, and the economic downturn has turned people sour, and the level of anger in the workplace has increased.  The lousy economy has resulted into increased levels of physical violence and verbal abuse in the office.   Some people do not handle adversity well and allow their emotions to get out of control.

Of course, conducting background checks will go a long way in weeding out the workplace bullies and those prone to commit violence in the workplace.   Doing the background check for criminal records and even county civil records where there are restraining orders against your candidate can prove helpful. Restraining orders usually result after domestic issues get out of hand.   With background checks you can discover if your candidate has any past history as a sexual offender or if he or she has a hatred for the opposite sex.

It is a good thing to come in after incidents of workplace violence and lecture and train employees on how not to act out in the workplace.  But the fact remains that the damage has already been done.  Someone has been hurt, or worse, and your business is embarrassed.   And costly lawsuits can result from the incident.

So check them out before you hire.

When reviewing background checks most criminal records reveal a commonplace  disposition.    We find when reviewing the criminal records that jail sentences can range from suspended sentences and deferred sentences, to fines, a little bit of jail time, or lengthy prison sentences, depending on the crime.   This, of course, is when the suspect is found guilty, as opposed to the ones where the case is dismissed or the district attorney’s office doesn’t move forward to trial.  In that case the disposition is listed as Nolle Prosequi.

One of the more interesting aspects of criminal background checks is to find the disposition listed is “sentenced to prayer.”   I have seen this sentence more than a few times.  By no means is this a prevalence criminal sentence, but it does come up.   Obviously, it is for the more minor infractions.  Writing a bad check, public disturbances, assorted misdemeanors.   I have yet to see one where a convicted armed robber has been sentenced to prayer.

At first I viewed this sentence with skepticism, but then the more I thought about it the more sense it made.   I thought at first that there is really no way to monitor the convicted party to see how long he prayed, how intensely he prayed, or if in fact he prayed at all.    I thought probably someone who broke the law would not be inclined to pray as penance for the crimes committed.

But the more I thought about it, I considered that the Judge, having the defendant before him had a pretty good read on that person.  He may have asked the defendant questions about his own spiritual beliefs, which in turn may have prompted him to sentence the defendant to prayer.   The background checks of course would not show the interchange between the judge and the defendant, so the judge’s questions are jsut my assumption.

So with that in mind I realized the when one prays one focuses on issues beyond himself.   One looks deeper into situations and in a focused mode may come up with answers he would otherwise not find, given all of  life’s distractions.   After all, no matter what set of beliefs you have or what religion you follow, prayer is the act of focusing on issues larger than yourself.   And when focused in prayer, or deep contemplation for the more secular minded,  the defendant would then reexamine his actions and perhaps see the error of his ways.  He would try to amend his behavior and be less inclined to commit another crime.

Or not.  But in any event, upon reviewing background checks, I find “sentenced to prayer” a most interesting sentence.

Maurice River Township will require background checks for employees in the municipality.     Maurice River Township is located in New Jersey.   According to the article in the Cumberland County News, while the ordinance was introduced, it is not clear who would conduct the background checks and which employment candidates would require a background check.

It is good to see that more state and local government agencies and public service agencies are mandating background checks on their prospective employees.   I have blogged about this a number of times, including an recent article entitled  Dallas County to Run Background Checks on Constables.     It is a sign of the times, and a great many state and municipal branches, school districts,  and public service agencies are seeing the writing on the wall.

Unfortunately, more than a few have sen that writing on the wall only after they discovered someone they hired had a previous criminal record.  Often that previous critical records concerned sexual offenders, and often that person had been hired to teach or work at a school or in a public service agency responsible for children.   In fact, more than one legislative body or public service agency has been embarrassed when the person they hired has committed misdeeds while on the job.  Then comes the review of that employee’s history, only to discover the past criminal records and assorted transgressions.

Perhaps there was a time when employers actually knew the people they were hiring, having shared proximity and various social relationships.  But in many instances that time has long passed.   People move around.   Employees and quite often nurses and healthcare employees commit crimes and infractions in one state, the type of which that warrant disciplinary actions, only to move on to another state.   Often their past infractions go undiscovered.

It is one thing for a state or public service agency to not run background checks. Stupid but somewhat understandable, given the budgetary constraints of a lousy economy.   But it is quite another to actually order the background checks and then have no one review them, carefully.    Or to order background checks and only to find they are slow in the turnaround process and supervisors forget to take a lot upon their return.   It is dangerous and a waste of money.

So check them out before you hire. And then review the reports.  Take advantage of what you paid for.