Good (and Bad) Background Checks

More organizations use background checks to investigate criminal histories and to make hiring and firing decisions. It's up to CSOs to make sure this powerful but flawed weapon doesn't backfire.

Tena Friery, research director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego, says she gets calls all the time from people who claim to have been denied employment because of errors in their background checks. And it's become clear to her that employers are not always following the rules. "The employer sometimes says pretty outrageous things, like that the individual isn't allowed to get a copy of the report," she says. It doesn't always help if the individual fixes the mistake, either. "Employers may get spooked and say, we'll hire this other candidate," she says.

More broadly, some observers voice their concerns that individuals who have paid their debt to society are being marginalized by excessive reliance on background checks. "Just because someone has a criminal history record doesn't mean they're dangerous," says Bushway, the criminologist. "How long has it been? What did they do? Employers need to know how to read these things."

Employers can best address these concerns by making sure that the information they're checking truly has a bearing on the job at hand. "What information about one's life is truly relevant to one's job?" Privacy and American Business's Westin asks. "The public can say, Yes, we think this is a legitimate thing for the employer to ask, but we don't think that is." In a recent survey by his organization, for instance, 92 percent of respondents said it was acceptable for employers to check whether a job applicant's résumé contains false information. But only 24 percent thought it was acceptable to check if an applicant had ever filed for bankruptcy.

The way Gus Bremer, senior manager for corporate security at Ryder, sees it, there are three keys to making sure a background check program is fair: a good job description, specific standards about what constitutes a "pass" and an exception system. "If you don't have a well-defined job and a process, if you deny me employment, I might have a leg to stand on going to the [Equal Employment Opportunities Commission] and saying, Look, they actually hired others with similar records to do similar jobs, so they're being unfair to me," Bremer says. "You need pretty good standards to apply to every situation."

Sometimes, though, there will be exceptionsas when, perhaps, someone has an old conviction for marijuana possession but has been a law-abiding citizen ever since. Every month, about 10 or 15 background checks land on Bremer's desk for possible exceptions. "There are people who have done some silly things that they have great regret for later, and [this process is] to make sure that you do have the right employee," he says. "You want the well-qualified person who does not have a recurring problem with honesty or drugs."