The days when employers had to concern themselves only with screening the backgrounds of full-time employees are gone. The employment and screening landscape has changed dramatically, demanding that employers concern themselves with the backgrounds of contractors or vendors entering their premises, or working on their behalf in customer homes.  CARCO has created a white paper examing the risks of not engaging in such screening, and offers solutions for companies looking to develop programs to screen contract and vendor employees.

To download the white paper entitled The Importance of Policy Guidelines for Fair Use of Criminal History Checks and Vendor Access Programs in Avoiding Litigation, please visit www.carcogroup.com.

E- Verify Update as of June 29 2010. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a Privacy Impact Assessment update of the E-Verify program. In the update, DHS provides an update about additional information that E-Verify will now require from new employers that register with the employment eligibility verification system. This new information will be sent to Dun & Bradstreet, an organization that provides a range of information about businesses; the information will be compared against Dun & Bradstreet’s database to ensure that the new employer is indeed an official enterprise.

New information that will be collected include the following:

The employer’s DBA name, if applicable (Doing Business As).

The employer’s DUNS number, if available (a Dun & Bradstreet identification number). If the employer does not have a DUNS number, the employer’s address, phone number and other data will be used to clearly authenticate the employer.

The corporate administrator’s name.

The parent organization, if applicable.

The place where the employer heard about the E-Verify program (an optional field).

 If Dun & Bradstreet is able to verify the authenticity of the employer, the new employer will then be able to automatically register for an E-Verify account. If Dun & Bradstreet is unable to verify the employer’s authenticity, the employer will then need to be contacted via phone or email

By Doreen Koronios

There was an interesting story in the Kansas City news that speaks to this very subject.  A veteran needed a job to help pay some bills and get back on his feet, but he says the opportunity to work at the Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kansas, was taken away from him after he was falsely accused of being a sex offender.

 (May 14, 2010) Christopher Michael Reynolds says that he was supposed to start at the water park on May 4th, but when he showed up, officials told him to leave after he was informed that he was a registered sex offender.  According to the background company that conducted the background check for Schlitterbahn, Christopher Reynolds was convicted of sexual battery in Bexar, Indiana, on March 11, 2007.

 But there was a big problem with the company’s background check. “When this happened, I was in Iraq, serving in the Army National Guard,” said Reynolds. Reynolds had a solid alibi with his military records, and the more he investigated, the more Reynolds learned about the investigation.

“His eye color, his height, the weight, the fact that I’ve never been to Indiana,” said Reynolds, who says that he even found a picture of the other Christopher Reynolds, the sex offender, who also has a different middle name. It was a silly mistake, but one that Reynolds says has some serious implications.

This has all the marks of a sloppy criminal history check that was conducted through a database search.  Some of these databases are primarily name based and it is very easy for a false positive to appear. At CARCO Group, we use the supplemental database as a pointer to “cast a net”, as one of the responders said, to identify potential hits in other states.  If there is a potential match CARCO will search the appropriate state or county utilizing the name, SSN and DOB of the candidate.  Additionally, as part of the CARCO difference we re-verify each adverse record to make sure that we positively verify the identity of the subject as well as ensure that we legally report our findings according to the federal and state statutes. These are important steps that will help keep our clients out of costly lawsuits.