Investigation nation

Reality TV can't compete with the real thing. Since the September 11th tragedy, more organizations are choosing to perform thorough background checks on new hires. Employers want to know more about a person than a mailing address and experience. Criminal records, drug testing, driving records, credit history reports, personality assessments, even fingerprint checks are just some of the tools that managers are using to screen prospective employees.

BackgroundChecks.com of Dallas conducts over 30,000 background checks per month, including instant, online checks that cost $4.25 in comparison to the traditional, more expensive criminal checks that require more thorough investigation. "It's not necessarily what you don't know about somebody, it's what you should know about somebody," says Craig Kessler, CEO of BackgroundChecks.com. "If you have the tools and the ability to get access to this information, you need to start. If your company doesn't want to do that, then you have some liability issues, which are dubbed as negligent hiring. A lot of employers don't know about their employees until it's too late."

Kessler says more background checks have been conducted since September 11th because of the raised awareness. "What we are finding is that prior to September 11th, companies were like 'we'll talk about it with the individual.' Now it's 'we're not going to hire anybody with any type of offense like that.'"

Most employees are accepting of background checks, Kessler says. However, screening can affect morale for those who were never checked to begin with. "It's just like everyone who expects to go through all the trouble at the airports for the sense of security. One of the things that a company should do is disclose that it's going to do a background check up front," Kessler says.

After September 11th, some companies that hadn't conducted background checks before reevaluated their situation, and now some people may be out of a job. "You need to do whatever you can to protect your organization and the general public. No company can afford a negative outcome," Kessler says. --T.B.