Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Background checkers doing booming business
A lawsuit or arrest is part of someone’s past that increasingly many new employers want to know about.
As the economy improves and companies add workers, many are taking the opportunity to revamp their hiring processes. And, with many people still out of work and vying for a limited number of jobs, employers can be pickier than ever.
At the St. Louis- based AAIM Employers Association, a provider of employerrelated business services to 1,600 employers, the number of companies utilizing the background checks and drug tests that the association offers its members more than doubled last year while its membership rose only marginally.
In 2012, 810 companies sought “AAIMCheck” background checks or drug tests from the organization, up from 392 in 2011.
The group’s background checks include employment and education verification, driving records and criminal histories. But county civil record searches that detail a prospective employee’s past or current civil lawsuits was the category that the association saw the most growth in from 2011-12, company executives said. A standard search dates back seven years.
Overall, AAIMCheck ran 19,215 background checks in 2012, up from 8,313 in 2010. The number of drug tests it conducted for its members grew from 502 in 2010 to 4,236 last year.
Philip Brandt, the association’s president and chief executive officer, said the sharp rise in the number of checks isn’t because of increased hiring by its members.
Instead, employers are increasingly becoming aware of the high costs when they don’t prescreen workers, he said.
“Hiring people costs money,” Brandt said. “To get it right the first time is what employers are more focused on now.”
An added danger, Brandt said, is the greater exposure companies face when a highranking employee is caught misrepresenting information on his resume.
Examples of executives whose resumes contained errors that proved embarrassing for their employers include Yahoo Inc.’s former chief executive Scott Thompson, who was ousted from the company a year ago after news broke that he had claimed to have a degree in computer science he hadn’t earned.
“There’s more and more awareness when hires go wrong,” Brandt said. “That can be devastating for their business.”
But with the increase, employers need to make sure they don’t run afoul of federal law.
“It’s a trend that we’ve been noting for several years, particularly after 2011,” Michelle Rodriguez, staff attorney for the National Employment Law Project, said about the increasing numbers of employers conducting background checks and drug tests. The law project is an employee advocacy nonprofit organization based in New York.
Rodriguez said the number of companies that offer these services is increasing, and technology is making it faster and easier for the checks and tests to be performed.
Her group is fielding more complaints from people who say background checks are making it impossible to find work, she said.
“Unfortunately, there are too many companies that have blanket bans” based on criminal history or other factors, Rodriguez said.
A year ago, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission provided new guidance that said the use of some background checks in hiring can violate prohibitions against employer discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
For example, a company could be in violation of Title VII if it uses criminal history information for applicants in different ways for different groups, based on the applicants’ race or national origin.
Two years ago, World Wide Technology began conducting criminal background checks on new employees who oversee buying and selling equipment — the first time it required this check in the company’s 23-year history.
Now, the St. Louis- area systems integration firm, which employs more than 2,000 people, is considering making criminal background checks a requirement for all new employees.
“That will be the next step, because of our growth and increased visibility and liability” said Paul Koetting, World Wide Technology’s director of human resources. “We’re always trying to protect the company from all angles. When we were a smaller company, it wasn’t as important. When you get bigger, you can become a target.”
And, the St. Louis Zoo, which employs up to 800 people in the busy summer months, made drug testing mandatory three years ago for all seasonal, part-time and full-time employees.
“We want to know as much as we can about new employees,” said Dustin Deschamp, the zoo’s human resources director. “It is becoming almost industry standard to perform background checks and drug testing because of the liability issues you’re facing.”
The zoo follows all labor laws when it uses information gleaned from background checks and drug tests, Deschamp said.
“We don’t automatically disqualify anybody based on what we see in background checks,” he said. “We want to make sure we are doing everything we can to make sure the zoo is as safe as possible for visitors and co-workers.”
David Minton, president and chief executive officer of Clayton, Mo.-based Heartland Bank, said the bank, which employs 300 people, has used background checks and drug tests on all new hires for at least six years.
“We’re obviously handling one of our customers’ most important possessions, their money,” he said. “We want to make sure that we do that with employees of the highest caliber.”
But even with the information the background checks and drug tests can offer, Minton said, employers should also rely on other factors to make their hiring decisions.
“There’s no substitute for checking references,” he said.