Screening Employees

I have a friend who is opening a restaurant soon and needs to hire about a dozen employees. He wants to run criminal background checks on them to make sure of what he is dealing with so that he can make an accurate, informed decision when hiring these people. He checked with ADT and another "personnel screening" type company and they wanted huge fees. I looked online and saw there are a lot of companies offering this kind of service, but the costs vary widely, and I don't know if they are any good or just internet scams. Has anyone done this kind of thing? Do you have any recommendations or information about reliable services or costs you could share?

I have a couple alternatives to offer.
When your prospective employee parks his / her car for the interview, have someone go out and see what kind of mess it is. They are likely to treat their car like their life. A little messy is okay, but a bio hazard might spell trouble down the road.
A credit check on a prospective employee can prove very useful too. They might have avoided prison but if they don't know how to manage their money, they won't be able to manage your's.

Check with your local/ state police force. I know for a while there in Tennessee, the TBI was doing background checks for 30.00. I'm not sure if they still do or not, but for a few months they actually had some advertising promoting it.

Just be aware that in many places discriminating against someone on the basis of a prior criminal record is illegal. In many you can't even ask that question of a prospective employee. I'm not saying your friend has to hire anyone who walks in, but he can't use a person's criminal record as the sole basis for rejection. Besides that, those who have a criminal record are those who happened to get caught. Being "clean" doesn't guarantee squat. Tell your friend to just use his gut instinct. 99 times out of 100 you can feel out an employee who is going to be trouble. A good idea is to state up front that you have a probabationary period of a few weeks where you can fire the employee without recourse. This will allow weeding out the losers. A lot of ex-convicts turned out to be fine employees. I worked with a few in the course of my life. They made a mistake, paid for it, and straightened their lives out.

carbine15 said:

I have a couple alternatives to offer.
When your prospective employee parks his / her car for the interview, have someone go out and see what kind of mess it is. They are likely to treat their car like their life. A little messy is okay, but a bio hazard might spell trouble down the road. ...

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You've got to be joking. You can get all that from the appearance of a person's car?

carbine15 said:

A credit check on a prospective employee can prove very useful too...

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Then I'd never get a job at this restaraunt...my credit score is sucky, but that's primarily because my income is so low and medical expenses are so high, not because of some less-than-honourable behaviour. :shakehead

No one mentioned credit scores. He doesn't care about that stuff. He's extending employment, not credit.

Lightmeup said:

No one mentioned credit scores. He doesn't care about that stuff. He's extending employment, not credit.

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True, but pulling a criminal record and credit check is pretty much common in with mid to large size businesses these days. I work for an insurance company and we pull your credit record to decide what you premium will be when quoting insurance.

The only catch is that you have to get permission for a credit check and you have to disclose to them if that is the reason you are not going to hire them. Actually you have to give them a chance to verify that the credit rating is accurate.

All the answers you want can likely be found here: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/credempl.shtm

Kroll offers these background checks...we use them for our new employees, and they run less than $100 each.

CM said:

You've got to be joking. You can get all that from the appearance of a person's car?

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Does seem a bit strange.

Still, I must admit to keeping my car (before it was totalled recently) very clean. My reputation at work happens to be excellent.

I also know of a young couple who did a ****-poor job of keeping their Pontiac clean. But they mostly tossed all their garbage into the trunk. Let's see, first time they met was online. They chatted for hours.... and then moved in together 24 hours later. (I $#^% you not!)

In the end, she got pregnant and left him after the baby girl was born. He just disappeared. All I do know is that he never chased after her.....

Perhaps there is indeed something to how folks keep their car clean.

If you want to see if a person would make a good employee, see if they were previously a good employee. Call their previous employers. If they are young students and perhaps have never had a job, ask them to provide report cards and a list of their teachers/coaches as references. They need not be strait A students, but everyone should be able to pull off a 3.0 even half asleep.

Everyone makes mistakes in life, including criminal, financial, or personal, but it's the patterns of behavior that are most indicative of future behavior.

Here's a tip though, don't rely too much on the interview. A person's charisma, personality, and charm say very little about how responsible and hardworking someone is. I'd even venture to say that a person's charm only makes it easier for them to get away with being dishonest.

As far as the background checks... they are costly and don't truly indicate whether a person will be an asset or not to the company. But to cover your *** against major liability should the person be a sex criminal (easy to find out if they are a registered sex offender), or perhaps a violent criminal, you could tell them during the interview that you will be conducting a background check and would like to know if there is anything they would like to tell you beforehand (such as warrants, arrests, or convictions).

My supervisor got written up for hiring someone who was flagged by the background check. Wasn't really his fault because accounting (who does runs the bg checks) told him "it's probably just a traffic ticket". Anyway it turned to out be a sex crime! Well, kind of.... apparently peeing in public counts as a sex crime. But this just goes to tell that a BG check might not tell the full story. Hell, I can't even count the number of times I've pee'd in public.

+1 on what jtr1962 said...

Try pipl.com spend a couple of bucks to get more info..on the sites they refer to...and you likely get the same info as the expensive services will tell you.. just in a less fancy report.

Supernam said:

If you want to see if a person would make a good employee, see if they were previously a good employee. Call their previous employers.

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In at least 3 of my previous employers we were not allow to say anything other than to verify that a person worked there. Any type of subjective comment was forbidden due to the fact that the former employee might sue on the ground that disparaging remarks were made against them. I think one employer actually settled out of court on these grounds. A hiring manager actually told the person what the former manager said.

Good or bad I guess I agree with that policy.

bitslammer said:

In at least 3 of my previous employers we were not allow to say anything other than to verify that a person worked there. Any type of subjective comment was forbidden due to the fact that the former employee might sue on the ground that disparaging remarks were made against them. I think one employer actually settled out of court on these grounds. A hiring manager actually told the person what the former manager said.

Good or bad I guess I agree with that policy.

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I don't.

That type of policy just screws over the hard-working employees, and let's the jack@$$e$ get away with doing a shi**y job.

I was disgusted when one employeer told me that all they would do is verify that I worked for them. Gee, thanks for saying that hard-work and loyalty don't mean $#^%!

At the very least, you should be able to ask how often an employee showed up late for work, and how many Write-ups they have; and what for. None of those things are subjective. If someone doesn't want a former employer to say negative things about them, perhaps they should get up off their lazy @$$, and actually do their work, properly.

CM said:

You've got to be joking. You can get all that from the appearance of a person's car?

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Organization skills affect every aspect of life.

You usually won't get much info from a previous employer. Many are concerned about being sued for giving out that type of info. All we (our personnel div) will say to an inquirer is that, indeed, the person worked here. That's it.

Very simple way around the former employer thing. Remember, the applicant is coming to YOU for a job. Make them sign a waiver. Just like law enforcement applicants, they go and look for every single piece of dirt on you. EVERYTHING is fair game. At the same time though, you as the employer, must use your own intuition and discretion with the information that you find. As I said before, we all make mistakes, but it's the PATTERNS of behavior that are more indicative of a person's habits.

that's a bit of a harsh. I think a simple criminal history check is sufficient, not every employer needs to be as scrutinizing as police agencies.

Sure, if you are the employer it is up to you. But if I were applying for jobs and the employer wants to screen me as rigorously as the CHP, why don't I apply to CHP in the first place? They most likely will pay better than 90% of the jobs out there.

In my life time I have seen more "clean" people screw up and lose companies more money than the ones who slipped up and now working to redeem one's self. You think those people who speculated stocks with company cash had any convictions prior to losing billions of company funds? Not likely.

Supernam said:

Very simple way around the former employer thing. Remember, the applicant is coming to YOU for a job. Make them sign a waiver. Just like law enforcement applicants, they go and look for every single piece of dirt on you. EVERYTHING is fair game. At the same time though, you as the employer, must use your own intuition and discretion with the information that you find. As I said before, we all make mistakes, but it's the PATTERNS of behavior that are more indicative of a person's habits.

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I doubt many people apply to restaurant jobs over law enforcement jobs simply because it's a less rigorous application process.