Q: In order to reduce costs, we’ve considered requiring candidates for faculty openings to provide (and pay for) their own background checks. Is this a good idea? What are the pros and cons?
A: While we encourage a school’s efforts to reduce costs, in general, requiring candidate’s to provide their own background checks isn’t a practice we would recommend in any way, shape, or form. We would find only “cons” to this approach, including:
1. By enabling the candidate to submit their own background report, the school is giving up direct control of the quality and rigor of the data provided (how many states of prior residence are searched for criminal history), as well potentially receiving information that it otherwise wouldn’t see (e.g., such as if the candidate-provided report includes information about arrests rather than solely conviction information). In addition, of course, the potential for fraudulent information being provided to the school increases greatly since data isn’t received directly from the source (the screening vendor).
2. The cost of even the most rigorous background screening report (usually $100 or less) is only a small fraction of the cost of the employee’s annual salary (e.g., $100 is 0.33% of a $30,000 salary). More importantly, this is an even smaller fraction of the cost of defending the school against a negligent hiring lawsuit (if a candidate sneaks through the screening process due to an insufficient screening process and harms someone at the school).
3. A school can limit its annual background screening expenses more appropriately by ordering screening reports only on its final candidates (i.e., the candidate who will be offered the position as long as the background report comes back clean) rather than on multiple candidates for a position.
Once a month, ISM's Human Resources Consultant Michael Brisciana will answer an HR-related question submitted by one of our readers. To ask Michael a question to be in addressed in future e-letters, please click here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZugbHeKTMMWatch this month's Q&A podcast. Michael answers the question, "We’ve never been given harassment training to our management team or our faculty and staff before. Our Board is pushing for this, but the Head of School is resistant, fearing that it will put thoughts into people’s minds when no issues actually exist. Is this training legally required–and what do you suggest we do?”
