The Assignment: Find a site director for a 250+ employee pharmaceutical contract manufacturing site in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, area. The Players: The Candidate, let’s call him Charlie: 25 years of progressive experience in the pharmaceutical industry with strong leadership…
Background Checking
Envisioning a Blockchain Future for Recruiting
The road ahead will be paved by blockchains. Great things will happen. Like what? Patience, wait for the revolution. When is it coming? Soon. We’ve seen this movie before. A technology emerges in another industry and the recruiting world becomes…
The Top 10 Reasons Why Social Media Background Checks Are a Dumb Idea
The latest addition to the modern recruiting process, social media background checks, may be the dumbest element. Unlike most background checks, they don’t verify positive job-related information. Instead, they are used almost exclusively to reject candidates based on a subjective…
Recruiters Should Adapt Background Screening Methods for Growing Gig Economy Workforce
The fast growing “gig economy” that focuses on temporary work — or “gigs” — accounted for 30 percent of new jobs and created new income sources for 2.1 million people in the United States between 2010 and 2014, according to…
The New New Thing: Blockchains and Recruiting
If reading about AI is making you feel like Alice in Wonderland, then take heart, there’s something new on the horizon — Blockchains. The technology has been around since 2008 but is now getting more mainstream in business applications, though…
3 Rules of Thumb for Screening Candidates Without Crossing the Line
Bringing in the best talent possible isn’t just about finding candidates who look the best on paper. To make sure they’re truly a fit for your organization, make sure they live up to the hype. Often, you can get a…
The 8 Things That References Say Candidates Need to Improve On
The New York Times had an interesting feature in the Sunday Review section on October 18, titled “Why What You Learned in Preschool Is Crucial at Work.” It discusses how important social skills are for today’s fastest-growing jobs. In the…
Let’s Uncheck All the Boxes
You won’t often find a policy question where the conservative Koch brothers and liberal legislators like U.S. Senator Cory Booker are in agreement. But here’s one: the debate over “Ban the Box,” which would make it illegal to ask about…
7 Great Questions to Ask an Applicant’s References
Verifying the information on a potential employee’s application or resume helps prevent or limit the risk of making a bad hire. By talking to an individual’s personal and professional references, you have the opportunity to gather more information about the…
Examining the Growing Trend of ‘Ban the Box’
Employers often seek as much information as possible about their candidates and the strengths and competencies they can bring to the company. But is asking about their criminal history during the application process going too far? With the proliferation of…
Mr. Background Check’s Checkup
Scene: Antiseptic, hospital room filled with the latest diagnostic equipment. Mr. Background Check lies happily in bed, not a care in the world. By his side are his nurse and doctor. Nurse cheerily: Good morning Doctor. How is Mr. Background…
Worker Drug Test Positives Rise for First Time Since 2003
After a decade of slowly declining workplace drug test results, Quest Diagnostics said the trend reversed last year with more workers testing positive, particularly for marijuana and amphetamines. Although the total positive results are small — of 7.6 million urine…
Credit Reports in the Hiring Process: How to Bring Clarity to the Confusion
Employers use credit reports to assess a candidate’s stability and their propensity to be dishonest or commit fraud. But this implies that the HR/recruiting representative understands how to analyze derogatory items on a credit report to determine whether they are…
Recruiting to Avoid a Rocky Mountain High — the Impact of State Marijuana Laws
How a state law becomes a recruiting issue I recently visited Boulder, Colorado, and guess what: everyone there was talking about the new marijuana law. If you are recruiting leader for a large corporation, you may fail to realize how…
New Tips Out on Background Checks
New assistance is out from the U.S. government on the use of background checks. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission co-published the documents. Fortunately, they’re written pretty clearly, and have a good set of links…
Celebrate Employee Appreciation Day by Hosting an SAT Test
You didn’t forget, did you? Forget that today is Employee Appreciation Day? Or forget what your high school SAT scores were? First things first, which, for our more-or-less weekly roundup columns means that we begin with the weird, the odd,…
Los Angeles Wants Probation Officers — But This Time, They Better Not Be Troublemakers
They’re looking for probation officers here in Los Angeles, but the county doesn’t want to repeat the experience of 2005 to 2008, when many hires didn’t get much of a background check and ended up with DUIs or even battery…
Flunking the Test: Demystifying Pre-Employment Testing
The sad truth is, in the pursuit of money, needing a job and fear of failure, people create false resumes and falsify information when they go to an interview. To help ensure candidates are who they say they are, many…
Sacred Cows and Silly Practices Die Slowly in Recruiting
Recruiting is full of practices that seem to last forever. Unfortunately, many practices endure for years despite the fact that they add no value to the hiring process. I call these well-established practices “sacred cows” because many lon-gtime recruiters and…
Is Your Background Screener Doing the Job? Here’s How to Tell
Choosing and monitoring your background screening vendor is as important — and maybe more so even — than the interview you conduct with candidates. “The worst thing you can do,” says Fred Giles, chair of the National Association of Professional…