2008 Best Employee Screening Posts

Kindergarten Teacher With A Criminal Record Teaches For 5 Years

November 6, 2009 By Chris Miller

On October 20, 2009, while on her lunch break, a Tennessee kindergarten teacher was cited for shoplifting $62 worth of wrinkle cream from Walmart. This past summer the teacher was convicted of stealing steaks from a Kroger. She has three DUIs and a citation for driving on a suspended license for excessive speeding tickets. She also has five aliases and she’s been teaching young children for the past five years.

As of November 5, 2009 she was still in the classroom teaching. Watch the video.

What’s wrong here?

The state only requires a background check at the time of hire.

This is a good reminder that your organization should have a Post-Hire Screening Program in place.

A Post-Hire Screening Program (also called recurring screening) is considered a best practice for employers. It ensures a safe workplace and helps reduce the risk of a negligent retention lawsuit. Conducting checks on all new hires is essential. Keep in mind, that a lot can happen in the years after a new hire comes aboard. Companies should consider protecting themselves with periodic post-hire criminal checks and drug screening.

For more information please read:

The Importance Of Post-Hire Background Checks

How A Woman Falsified Her Nursing Credentials For 18 Years

November 4, 2009 By Chris Miller

This is a fascinating and also sad story of how a woman stole, lied and cheated her way through life.

Source: TheTelegraph.com

For years, she kept ahead of her lies, moving from state to state with false credentials that showed her to be a nurse. This week, the law caught up with Catherine Marie Connor.

The Grafton woman was sentenced Wednesday to a year and a day in federal prison in a wire fraud case in which she followed a trail of deceit to secure a nursing license and nursing or related jobs in multiple states.

Connor, 55, was sentenced this week in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

She pleaded guilty in July for a case that developed over a period of years, beginning in 1991 and ending in March 2009, court records state, during which time she made some $625,013.07.

A crucial element of the case was the woman’s background, dating to 1984 when, as Catherine Smith living in Virginia, she was sentenced to a two-year term on two felony counts of credit card theft and two felony counts of forgery, the indictment states.

Recruiters Are Checking You Out On Facebook

August 20, 2009 By Chris Miller

Employers increasingly turning to Facebook to check up on you

by Christopher Null: The Working Guy. Yahoo Tech

If you’re lucky enough to have landed a job interview in this economy, you’d better have your ducks in a row. And more and more these days that means getting your social networks in order before your would-be bosses come sniffing around.

According to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder, Facebook has become the network of choice for recruiters to sniff out data about job applicants, with 30 percent of hiring managers saying they use Facebook searches to research information about new and potential hires.

Read the rest of the article here.

Employee Screening Articles For June & July 2009

August 3, 2009 By Chris Miller

In case you missed any of our employee screening articles for June and July, here’s a quick recap of our most popular:

Smart, Compliant Hiring Decisions Made Easy

FYI Screening, Inc. offers a complete portfolio of employee screening services that will help you work smarter while providing the industry’s fastest turnaround and the highest quality results. This will allow your company to focus on what really matters: hiring and retaining the best employees possible.

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4 Tips On How To Use Social Networks For Employee Screening

July 28, 2009 By Chris Miller

One of the hottest and most controversial topics in the background screening space is the use of social networks to screen employees.

The New York Law Journal covers this important issue in an article titled “Social Networking and Blogging: Managing the Conversation.”

The Tips:

Employers choosing to screen blogs and social networking profiles must also comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The FCRA requires an applicant’s or employee’s consent before an employer may engage a “consumer reporting agency” to produce a “consumer report” on that individual. FCRA does not prohibit employers from receiving or using the consumer report that contains information derived from social networking sites or blogs, but it requires disclosure that such information resulted in an adverse employment decision.
Employers should also develop clear rules regarding their hiring procedure if they wish to make use of available online information from personal blogs and social networking sites for screening purposes.
For instance, it is vital that a wall be constructed between the ultimate decision maker and the individual conducting the initial online research. While specific rules will vary based on an individual employer’s needs, any employer utilizing these technologies should ensure that irrelevant information is screened and filtered before it reaches the decision maker.
The law applicable to employee blogging and social networking is still evolving, and the lack of legal precedent leaves significant room for interpretation. When making use of online resources, however, it is better to err on the side of caution, as the potential risks to the employer can be significantly greater than any benefits the additional information social networking sites and blogs may provide.

Smart Business Decisions Made Easy

FYI Screening, Inc. offers a complete portfolio of employee screening services that will help you work smarter while providing the industry’s fastest turnaround and the highest quality results.

This will allow your company to focus on what really matters: hiring and retaining the best employees possible.

Subscribe to our blog to stay informed
Follow on Twitter
Connect on LinkedIn