Screening guidelines can vary from state to state and even county to county so how does centralized HR for a national company handle employment screening for new hires? Apparently not very well. The Labor Law Journal took notice last month of a law suit filed in California against Starbucks for using a one-size-fits-all application. Truth be told: applicants in California with a marijuana-related misdemeanor more than two years old are not required to disclose it on job applications.

Clearly this falls into the sometimes-fact-is-stranger-than-fiction category but it illustrates a valid and often overlooked point: labor laws vary from one geography to the next. You can never be too careful about what you ask or what you screens you request when evaluating a potential candidate.

In their 2008 Report to the Nation, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reported that U.S. organizations lose 7% of their annual revenues to fraud. Even with the implementation of tighter controls under Sarbanes-Oxley, fraud is more likely to be reported by whistleblowers than uncovered by audits. Perhaps the reason for that finding can be attributed to the fact that 29% of the frauds reported in this survey were committed by persons in the accounting department, while 18% were committed by executives or upper management.

While past performance is not always an indicator of future behavior, it can’t hurt to check. Protect your organization by routinely running background screens on hires for all levels of your organization.

New York Correction Law Article 23-A attempts to define fair use of criminal background checks when evaluating candidates for hire. While it is not our intent to provide legal advice, it may be helpful for hiring managers in New York to take note that “The public policy of this state, as expressed in this act, is to encourage the licensure and employment of persons previously convicted of one or more criminal offenses.”

If you are hiring in New York or screening applicants from New York, make sure you are in compliance by:

1. Presenting a copy of Article 23-A to the applicant along with the criminal background check release. You may also want to include reference to this in their general release.
2. Providing a copy of Article 23-A when a criminal conviction is reported (even if the conviction is from a jurisdiction outside New York). METSCheck provides this service by adding it directly to each report
3. Posting a copy of the article 23-A in your place of business.

After discovering that 2 out of 10 job applicants in the financial services industry have felonies on their record, METSCheck has made it our mission to educate all sectors of the financial services industry about the importance of background screening.

In January we joined the Affinity Program of the National Pawnbrokers Association (NPA). Now NPA members qualify for special rates negotiated by the association. Contact Renee Elberts for more information.

Earlier this month we attended the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA) annual conference in Orlando, Florida, and shared our message with the 500+ attendees at Omni Orlando Resort ChampionsGate.