Our topic for this article is one that is becoming more and more popular with hiring authorities. Employment background screening is gaining traction in many corporate and professional work environments. Far too many companies do not want to risk corporate assets to just anyone they might hire. In today’s climate, knowing who you hire is critical to the success of your organization.

Many companies offer this type of service to employers and depending on the position that is being filled, there are several checks that can be completed prior to hiring an individual.

Criminal History – this is probably the most common type of employment background screening. When an applicant has their criminal history examined a screening agency will check specific regions to determine if the applicant has a history of felony or misdemeanor charges on their record. Screening agencies will request where to search for criminal records as all felony and misdemeanor records are recorded with clerks of courts in the counties where the crime took place.

Driver’s License History – Also known as a Motor Vehicle report (MVR). This type of search is common for employees that will be driving either company vehicles or their own personal vehicle. This type of check is done at a state level and will reveal moving violations, suspensions and revocations, DUI or DWI arrests. This check will also reveal what class of license the applicant possesses in addition to any endorsements or restrictions that may be placed on a driver. Such as motorcycles, hazardous materials or large OTR truck classifications. This check will also verify date of birth and verify if any aliases exist for the applicant in question.

Credit History – These types of checks are often recommended for those applying for financial positions. Typically this type of check occurs when an applicant will be handing cash, such as a retail store clerk, or when an applicant will have access to bank accounts. A credit history check will help an employer determine exactly how responsible an applicant is. Most employers do not want to hire someone that has credit problems as this is an indication that the applicant is irresponsible and not trustworthy. All pre employment credit checks should be conducted in a manner that is consistent with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Employment Verification – Employment verification is one of the most common types of background screening conducted today. Often times applicants will exaggerate or falsify their employment and salary information in order to help their chances at being hired. This type of screening will often require direct communication with an applicant’s former employer. Questions asked will be of the verification type; typically dates of employment, position held, salary and whether or not the applicant is eligible to be re-hired. Sometimes a performance evaluation can be requested, however many companies have policies that prohibit comments on a former employess job performance..

Keep this in mind when searching for your next opportunity.

This question really hits home with us here at jobshouts. We hear it all the time. So many of our friends, friends of friends, and friends of family members. They all ask the same question can you help me find a job?

Since 2009 when we officially built our brain child, we wanted to give employers a way to connect with job seekers. That is also what still drives our development efforts. Since our launch we have signed on over 100 different fortune 500 employers and numerous smaller businesses.

First I want to reiterate that we will always be spam and scam free. We are diligent in who we accept into our employers roster. Never will you find a job that you might be scammed from.

Our next phase is going to shake the industry up some. We are aiming to let employers and business owners be proactive in their employee screening and recruiting process. Stay tuned there’s plenty more to come.

It is our job, to help you find a job. That is our mission and prime focus.

You might think employers want to stay as far away from discriminating practices as possible. What you don’t know is that many are using a legal strategy by which to discriminate, often times unfairly. I’m talking about credit checks in the hiring process. Many employers have begun using this as a way of determining someone’s “reliability” or worthiness before making an offer of employment. What’s wrong with this picture?

Let’s review:

dis·crim·i·nate

–verb (used without object)

1. make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs rather than according to actual merit; show partiality.

–verb (used with object)

2. to make or constitute a distinction in or between; differentiate.

Since employers are using credit checks to separate classes of people, by definition it’s discrimination. It’s legal and it’s an ugly practice, especially in a time of economic turmoil and record numbers of home foreclosures. This type of hiring practice not only perpetuates discrimination but it further injures our economic recovery as a nation.  There are so many still unemployed that there was recently another extension on unemployment benefits for those that have exhausted theirs. During that time of receiving unemployment, do you think those people were able to keep up with their credit card payments?  Now they face losing job opportunities for making the choice to feed their families instead of maintain their credit score.

Since when did hiring someone to do a job have anything to do with their credit? Since when did hiring someone have anything to do with anything other than their qualifications and abilities? Now more than ever, employers continue to use this form of discrimination as a way to narrow the pool of candidates. There’s only one problem with this type of competition – it leaves the most unfortunate victims of the economy out of the game altogether.  I find HUGE fault with eliminating a hard working and qualified candidate because their house is in foreclosure or they haven’t been able to keep up with credit card payments. First penalized by the economy, now penalized by employers. How is the workforce supposed to recover? We should be questioning laws that allow any kind of discrimination in the work force. Employers need to get their heads out of the clouds and start looking at people instead of credit reports and numbers.  I don’t care what some psychologist says about credit being a basis for knowing if someone is reliable or trustworthy. I don’t care what your CFO says about keeping hiring costs/risks down – discrimination is discrimination. Spade. The end. Is that really the picture you want to paint of your organization? “Oh, we’re a really great company to work for – as long as you have good credit!” This is the real world, perhaps you should join us.

Here’s what you need to know if you’re a job seeker:

1. Employers can legally request permission to run a credit check on you.

2. Employers are REQUIRED to get your signature on a permission form to do so. This could be on a job application too, so READ CAREFULLY what you are signing!

3. The credit check isn’t detailed, but gives the employer your credit score and # of delinquent accounts.

4. Get a copy of your own credit report.  Being proactive about your credit is a better approach than being reactive.

There are a lot of ways employers can silently discriminate against you but this is by far the most widespread and legal way it’s done. Now, tell me your thoughts on how we can fix this….

Most recruiters use job postings as a means to an end. They use them as extra hands when they have a full desk, to develop pipelines or for brand representation/perpetuation. Whether you’re posting jobs for any or all of these reasons, it is important to recognize the impact (or lack thereof) that job postings can create.

When I worked in agency recruiting, I frequently used documentation from clients to post jobs. It was easy to copy and paste what they had already put together and get it “out there”. I failed to realize that in doing that, I wasn’t creating much desire for job seekers to reply to my post. I started looking at my job postings more closely and noticed that if I rewrote the posting in my own words, I got much better responses. I would include information about my client that I knew would entice the applicant, without revealing who the client was. After all, I knew from my relationship with my client what they were really looking for – not just skills but candidate personality. I wrote the job postings to attract that type of personality. Sure, re-writing the job posting took more time but it paid off. I got more responses. I got better responses. I got hires. Even if you’re in HR and you’re posting on behalf of a hiring manager, you can still add verbiage to the specs you’re given to attract the right candidate.

Photo courtesy of MotivatedPhotos.com

The emergence of job search engines has directly impacted the importance of good verbiage in job postings.  Most recruiters don’t know that cross-posting the exact same job to multiple job boards doesn’t increase the chances of finding a candidate match, nor does it increase the number of postings that show up on the search engines. Indeed and SimplyHired filter out duplicate listings and only list the posting that they indexed first.  Accordingly, if you copy and paste the client requisition word for word – and 5 other companies have done the same – there is a big chance that your posting might not even get seen on the job search engines. Write your job specifically for your audience. Are you hiring for a Telephone Answering Service? Then say so.

This means knowing what part of a client requisition is important and what part isn’t. It means including relevant key words that your candidate audience is searching for. It means including information about the environment, the benefits, the hiring process and so on.  Many candidates are apprehensive to respond to vague job postings. They fear it’s just another “black hole”, a potential scam job, or in some cases, that it might be their current (or former) employer.

Confidential postings really turn job seekers off. If you want to remain confidential about the search, then hire a headhunter – don’t post the job on the internet. Don’t expect a job posting to be a silver platter, either. If you have a hard to fill position, a job posting is just another vehicle to perpetuate the message that you’re looking for that person. It still doesn’t mean that person is looking for your job. In other words, you’re still going to have to work on it. In some cases though, using appropriate key words to attract passive candidates can work. For instance, your job posting could turn up in a Google search when they are searching for other things pertaining to their industry or career. Pick your key words carefully! Don’t just dump them all into a meaningless paragraph at the bottom of your job posting.

The information you include in your job postings speaks volumes about your company, your recruiting practices and your professionalism. The bottom line is – job postings are advertisements for your company; represent yourself well.

There are a lot of job boards to choose from. Sometime last year it was estimated that over 100,000 boards were competing for a slice of an employers recruiting budget. JobShouts happens to share that vertical with several large and deep pocketed competitors.

Since there are so many players in this space, we felt it was necessary to build value and keep out the trash. When we speak of trash, we are talking about the kind of job ads that are geared towards fleecing the jobseeker or job ads that are either plain out scams or that require an investment from the candidate.

This has built trust with candidates, it has also paid off immensely in click traffic from our aggregate partners Indeed and Simply Hired. There are no complaints of scams, and the most important part? Our ads get clicks.

After all when it really comes down to it, filling that position may depend on how many people ‘see’ your ad and either apply or pass it along socially. That is where we are different, we employ many technologies and our network is vast and growing. Tap into the power of social media without having to learn twitter. Use our social media recruiting tool to locate potential candidates where they are most active – their social networking pages on twitter, linkedin, and facebook.

This graph shows our most recent numbers from jobs posted to Indeed. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that JobShouts! is crushing the competition and performing nearly as well as sponsored ads on the Indeed network. This data is a representative comparison of all jobs indexed and is for the month of April 2010. Yes that is a %450 better click rate than “All Job Boards”.