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"A truckload of lettuce can do a lot of harm if people have messed with it."
At one time, the warning from Derek Hinton, now president of professional driver employment record service, Dot Job History, would have sounded downright kooky. In this age, the Tulsa, Oklahamo-based CEO's advice is no laughing matter.
"There's been a realization that things workers use in the normal course of business can be used as weapons," says Hinton, who was former director of DAC Services, now owned by US Investigation Services, a Falls Church, Virginia-based provider of employee screening services.
Trucking is at the leading edge of a wave of employee screening that's growing ever broader and deeper. The Patriot Act of 2001, enacted at top speed in the wake of the New York and Washington attacks, mandates FBI checks for drivers of hazardous materials trucks. In January of 2005, the federal government began demanding that truckers who haul hazardous materials submit to fingerprinting. Most recently, port workers have begun undergoing background checks.
Still, whether they're looking for a position in the cab of a semi or the corner office of a Fortune 500 firm, job seekers may question the protective value of preemployment screening of everything from nine-year-old arrest records to credit histories.
"Screening out terrorists sounds like a great idea, but no one knows how to do it in practice," says Lewis Maltby, president of the nonprofit National Workrights Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. The consequences of a productive background check can be costly: A reputation tarnished and a career opportunity lost in a time when jobs are tough to come by.
| Your Rights |
| Some of your key rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act: |
- You must be told if your record is used to deny your application.
- You have access to the information in your record.
- You can demand that inaccurate information be corrected or deleted.
- Outdated information must be expunged from your record.
- Access to your record is on a need-to-know basis.
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Source: Federal Trade Commission
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Employers Get Personal
"If you apply for a professional trucking job, your personal life is going to come under much closer examination," says Mike Russell, vice president of public affairs at the ATA. What will that examination entail? "For various reasons, I can't say what they're looking for in background checks."
Maltby doesn't offer any reassurance to job candidates who may undergo scrutiny by the Feds. "The FBI's watch list is a complete grab bag," says Maltby. "The basis for that list is so irrational and overboard, the FBI won't even tell anyone how they get on that list."
A much greater number of job applicants are checked out not by government agencies, but by private, third-party screening firms hired by employers. Since September 11, 2001, business has been booming for specialists in background checks. "We're hearing from companies in all industries," says Steve Pearce, vice president of marketing for AbsoluteBackgrounds.com in Roseville, California.
Getting to Know You
What can employers find out about you through these firms? For a nominal cost, your prospective boss can uncover your last speeding ticket, civil lawsuits against you, your criminal record, whether you pay your credit card bills on time and much more. A number of states restrict or bar some of these checks, and in many cases, the employer must present your written permission to the screening firm.
According to Maltby, the problem with preemployment screening is that "anything in the report that the HR officer doesn't like gets considered" in the hiring decision, whether or not it's relevant to the open position. Virtually all employers would disagree.
Protect Yourself
What can you do to guard your career against harm from background checks? First, before you fill out applications and sign releases allowing the screening, make sure yours are not among the millions of inaccurate or out-of-date records stored in government offices and credit bureaus across the country.
Order a credit report and ask the bureau to correct any errors. Make sure that any arrests be expunged from your police record where possible. "If you've been arrested, a favorable disposition may not show up in your FBI file" unless you make it happen, says Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the Privacy Journal in Providence, Rhode Island.
Then go to your state's attorney general, or the department of labor or employment, to educate yourself about what questions a company is permitted to ask during the application process, Smith advises. Lastly, familiarize yourself with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which applies to various preemployment checks.