Suddenly, the Background-Check Business Is Booming
With the speed of cyberspace, repercussions from this month’s terror attacks raced across the country to the Redding headquarters of Pre-employ.com and MyBackground Check.Com near Mt. Shasta.
“We’ve had over a 100% increase in the number of business owners and landlords contacting us for information on criminal background checks since the tragedy,” said company president Robert Mather.
His employees are fielding nearly 2,000 inquiries a day as, across the nation, firms that specialize in background checks report a burst of inquiries and new business.
Details of how those suspected of the Sept. 11 hijackings blended easily into American life have sparked a realization among businesses that they may know very little about the people they hire. Background checks often are a mere formality in the hiring process, but consultants say they also are the starting point for corporate security.
Some companies are for the first time checking the criminal and job histories of new hires, according to consultants. Others are expanding their methods or ordering fresh checks on existing employees.
Empire International, a worldwide executive limousine service based in New Jersey, previously conducted random criminal record checks on its chauffeurs. Now it is ordering checks on all its drivers, many of Middle Eastern descent.
“People are very apprehensive now to travel, and our sales were off 60% last week,” said company President David Seelinger. “We felt that people, at least when they are in our cars, need to be comfortable and know [the drivers] have been checked.”
Although most employers say they don’t believe they are harboring potential terrorists, they do want to weed out people who could harm their companies or clients.
In the past, the focus has been on protecting companies from negligence suits for hiring employees who were incompetent or worse, said Charles Nekvasil, spokesman for Choice Point, an industry leader near Atlanta. “Now it is not covering our tails but recognizing the whole issue of [security] risk. . . . We’ve seen at least a doubling or tripling of our normal inquiry load.”
Consultants say security concerns have seldom been higher in this country. Following the hijackings, the 32,000-member American Society on Industrial Safety added a terrorism panel to its annual conference in San Antonio next month.
“You are beginning to see an increase in all kinds of services even remotely connected to security,” said Bob Disney, a corporate security expert who heads the ASIS council on global terrorism. “Things like bomb sniffing dogs, upgrades in access control--and more careful scrutiny of employees.”
In the digital age, there are thousands of firms that perform background checks, from private investigators and small companies with big Web sites to subsidiaries of major corporations. Some merely tap into public databases, while others also do courthouse and other field work.
There is no national clearinghouse that tabulates trends in the number of background checks being performed. But many companies contacted by The Times report increased business since the attacks that killed thousands in New York and Washington.
“We know airport security was lax, and they corrected it,” said Mather. “Employers are catching up. They are checking both new and existing hires.” He said a recent survey of 30,000 background checks by his company across the nation found that 16% of the applicants had a criminal record, falsification or other discrepancy in their applications.
Accurate Screens of New Brunswick, N.J., about 25 miles from the World Trade Center, has seen about a 15% increase in background check requests. “My e-mail and phone machine have been going bananas,” said owner Jolenn Eichert. “I’m getting lots of inquiries, and a good 50% turn into clients.”
Kroll Background America in Nashville, a division of the giant Kroll Associates investigative firm, is one of the biggest background investigators in the country. “Our inquiries are out of the roof now,” said Michael Rosen, senior vice president and general counsel.
Kroll estimates that only 15% of the nation’s companies perform thorough checks, including criminal records, when they hire. And many of those companies, such as hospitals and airlines, are merely fulfilling legal or contractual requirements.
By contrast, Rosen said, most companies implementing new procedures are doing it voluntarily, out of a rising concern for safety. “Companies are not hesitant to do [checks] now, and will find the money,” he said.
Security experts and consultants say many employers routinely performed checks so cursory that they were throwing their money away.
“You get what you pay for,” said more than one. A report can cost less than $50 or more than $5,000, depending on the scope of the work and who is doing it.
Some criminal record checks are done only in the county where a job applicant resides, missing crimes committed elsewhere. Some background checks do not go back very far, missing earlier employment problems. Other checks, such as those required for airline employees, are more extensive.
“When you do a check, you want to do a Social Security number chase, which lets you know where the subject lived the past 10 years,” said Eichert. “I would recommend a state and countywide [records search] for all potential employees. Do everything from motor vehicle infractions to slight misdemeanors through felony charges.”
Many current clients are asking Accurate Background in Ocala, Fla.--not far from where the hijackers did flight training--how to improve their own sleuthing.
“They ask whether there are any stones left unturned, without it becoming a witch hunt,” said owner Lola Gonzalez, who has been in the business 18 years. “One of the things I suggest is a locater. Did the person just live in Florida, or were they in Oklahoma where they may have had a conviction for firing into a conveyance with intent to commit homicide?”
Bob Gandee, president of BackTrack in Mentor, Ohio, said his company has previously received requests for criminal information on airline baggage handlers employed by an East Coast regional airline he declined to name.
“All they want is to do it in the county where the airport is located,” he said. “The person could have lived in in another state or county and they don’t authorize us to check [those places] because it costs too much. An additional county might cost $14. It’s not a heck of a lot of money when you consider what the ramifications might be.”
Henry Nocella, a consultant who headed Best Foods corporate security for 15 years, said, “one of the problems is there is no national database for checking someone’s background, or following someone’s professional licensure, such as a lawyer or doctor who has been disciplined.”
And it is relatively easy, he said, to steal the identity of another person, as the hijackers may have done in some instances.
A third issue is that individuals’ privacy rights must be balanced against security precautions. “There is going to be a lot of hard thought about that as we go forward,” he said.
It is too soon to tell whether the privacy rights of employees and job applicants are being violated, according to Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego, a consumer group.
“I think the special concern is that in the heat of the moment employers would not comply with the laws, that backgrounds would be done hastily and would negatively affect . . . applicants,” she said. “Another concern now is that they would be singling out individuals of Arab descent.”
