I thought this was an interesting issue, how far should companies go in doing background checks. I feel with the way the economy is heading right now, many people are going to have low credit scores and should that be a key factor in whether a person should be hired for a position.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/business/smallbusiness/02sbiz.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=human-resources
Victoria Warren
I am working at the Human Resources Department, and one of my tasks is to perform background check. As we have learned from Bolman and Deal, in the Human Resources Frame, one of the basic Human Resources strategies is to hire the right people. To ensure company’s successful, hire the right person plays a very important role. Don’t forget, people are the biggest and important asserts in the organization. We are not only look at candidates’ past working experience and qualification; we need to ensure whether the candidate’s background fits for the position. However, please keep in mind that even a person has a criminal background; you cannot use this as an excuse to reject the offer because it is discrimination. Do you know Judge Mathis? He hosts a court television at channel 11. But do you know he was admitted to a jail when he was a teenage? But look at him today; he is a very famous and successful judge. And regarding to whether the credit check is necessary, from my experience it depends on the job function.
ReplyDeleteYu Mei Wu
While I agree that background checks are important, I think that sometimes when they are done they are done so without context. For example I applied to a great job about 4 or 5 years ago at a financial company as an events manager - the pay would have been GREAT, the job description was awesome!! I would have been working on events to help educate people about finances. However, because it was a wall street company they did background checks. I had a "flag" on my credit at the time - a lien from a student loan payment I was struggling to make payments on - no criminal record, but that flag caused my application to be rejected by the HR department. The events department advocated on my behalf because they wanted to hire me, but the HR dept. said that company policy was not to hire anyone with flags on their credit because they might be tempted to steal from the company - the events dept argued that they never had access to any capital or even trade secrets, so how would it be possible to steal? So, in the end they did not get the candidate they wanted, and I did not get a job that I really really wanted - that in my opinion is a failure of background checks to reveal context.
ReplyDelete-Ken