Playing e-Detective;
Smart smarts: Checking out applicants online can save you trouble-and get
you into it - Management
Chris Penttila
WHEN SERGE KNYSTAUTAS IS CON-sidering
applicants for a job, he goes a step beyond reading. cover letters and
calling references. He uses Web search engines. "By the time we're down to
five or 10 candidates and we're figuring out who to bring in for an
interview, I'll spend 15 minutes searching [online]," says Knystautas, 28,
founder and president of Loki Technologies Inc., a six-employee tech company
in Bethesda, Maryland, with annual sales of about $1 million. "It's a good
gut check."
Knystautas keeps his searches simple. He pulls up Web sites of former
employers, does searches using the applicant's name, peruses university
sites, and cruises news archives for postings to chat groups. If the
applicant worked on a project with a notable name or has written source
code, he might try to see if there's some history of it online.
Knystautas and entrepreneurs like him are trying to simplify and improve
hiring processes by surfing the Web. If you know what you're looking for and
how to search for it, the Web is the ultimate repository of public
information. At least 20 states have already posted their criminal and
property databases on the Web, with more to come.
But using the Internet for background checks raises some interesting
questions. How seriously should you take the information you find? If you
find a picture online of an applicant drinking beer at a party, for example,
will that be enough to convince you not to hire that person? What if you're
reading up on the wrong individual and you don't realize it?
"The real danger here is that you can take things way out of context," says
Richard M. Smith, a Brookline, Massachusetts, Internet security and privacy
consultant. "Someone who wants to do this should take [the information] with
a grain of salt."
The Background Biz
That may be difficult for entrepreneurs
afraid a hire they make will go terribly wrong--for example, say they find
an applicant with a history of violence. It's those fears that are spurring
more employers to do background checks, says Baxter Gillespie, assistant
vice president of the Workplace Solutions division at Alpharetta,
Georgia-based Choicepoint Inc., which performs background checks on job
applicants for a fee. Choicepoint verifies identity and work experience,
checks credit and criminal history, and can "uncover information
[applicants] may not have reported to employers," he says.
The events of September. 11 have brought the importance of background checks
into the limelight. "On the smaller [business] side, we've seen a
significant increase in the number of customers," Gillespie says. Employers
are expanding the scope of what they look for, searching for records in
multiple states where an applicant has lived, for example.
Of the 378,000 background checks Choicepoint did during the first quarter of
last year, 9,900 applicants were found to have some sort of criminal
conviction they didn't mention on the application, including fraud, theft
and forgery. About 1,000 candidates had been charged with assault and
battery, 311 rape or other sex offenses, and 37 had faced murder charges.
Statistics like those are compelling, but Gillespie warns entrepreneurs
using the Net on their own to be very careful because the Fair Credit and
Reporting Act--which requires anyone handling consumer data to be impartial
and protective of individuals' privacy--applies to pre-employment background
screening. Ask applicants to sign a waiver if you plan on poking around--or
risk a future lawsuit.
Careful and
Consistent
Before you dig too deeply, make sure you've
got policies for performing online background checks, says Jack Vonder Heide,
president of Technology Briefing Centers Inc., a firm in Oakbrook Terrace,
Illinois, that teaches companies how to do background checks on the Web.
"It's important once you've got the information to double-check it," Vonder
Heide says.
Knystautas doesn't take Web research at face value. "You can't be sure of
the quality [of the information] you're getting," he says. "It's a fuzzy
science." He backs up Web searches with phone calls and face-to-face
meetings with applicants, where he can ask questions based in part on his
online research. If he has nagging questions, he asks them. "Unless [what I
find online] is something really bad, I don't worry about it too much," he
says. So far, he hasn't found anything "really bad" online about applicants,
although he has avoided potential investors based on what he's read about
them.
If you use the Web to check out job applicants, always confirm the
information and don't let your final decision hinge on what you find out
over the Internet. Also be prepared for questions about your own background
because Internet searches are a two-way street these days. Says Smith, "I
would expect that the person being interviewed for a job would also be 'Googling'
the company and their future boss. 'Googling' works both directions."
CHRIS PENTTILA is a freelance journalist in the Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
area Contact her at diris@sitting-duck.com or
www.sitting-duck.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Entrepreneur Media, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
|
