Tae-Yoon Mike Kim
MGT 301 Human Resources
Individual Assignment #2
June 12, 2012
Who is screening the screeners? In a society that claims so heavily on equal representation, protection, and treatment of all its citizens and boasts about the countries so called melting pot, it would be naïve to assume that discrimination is a problem of the past. The reason for the numerous cases that are presented each year about a minority group being treated unfairly, based on a potential plethora of different factors, is mostly due to latent discrimination and a few cases of outright discrimination. Latent discrimination is in some cases more severe because the untrained interviewer or the employer will act like nothing is the problem, but still presumes that certain factors about the interviewee could inhibit their job performance. In this specific case dealing with the screeners of employers, there is an apparent switch of trends to a heavier and often times obtrusive way of gathering information that doesn’t apply to the job criterions. With the growing trends of more intense background checks, many new employee screening companies have emerged and the level of quality and accuracy that these companies provide is unregulated and difficult to access. Lester Rosen, the president of the Employment Screening Resources, summarizes the new industry in a precise and decisive manner stating that this new trend is, “…an unregulated industry with easy money and, ironically, not a huge emphasis on hiring quality people to do the screening.” To be more effective and moral, employers should perhaps look at ways to access background checks within the confines of the company to maintain a higher level of control and consistency. For objective assessments such as criminal records or credit history checks, it would in most cases be more effective and efficient to outsource this task because of the lower cost and more experienced firms. However, an employer should look at developing its own HR team to be trained in collecting more information regarding skills and certain traits that would be essential to fitting into the company’s specific working environment and ethics. The employer could enact a 1-2 week training course that gives the screeners of HR the correct skills necessary to find out information that is needed to access the interviewee without invading their personal rights. This would be extremely beneficial because the results will be consistent and who better to access the potential interviewee than someone that has been a part of the company for a long time and knows the certain qualities required to fit in to the company. In addition, if the task of screening stays within the HR department, it is easier to control and make sure that no rules are being broken and every individual is guaranteed their protection of their rights. In some cases some employers and companies are committed to obtaining outsourced background checks. If this is the case the employer has the obligation to check the validity and also the reliability of the information being presented by these firms. There is variety of factors that needs to be checked. First, the duration or time the company has been in the industry. This would combat the huge influx of new companies that are entering this market just to earn easy money while not emphasizing the importance of their job. Second, check and double-check the certain questions and aspects being investigated for your own specific company’s needs. For example, if your company sells hunting equipment it would be beneficent to ask certain questions of the candidates experience or passion of the sport to ensure that these employees will be enthusiastic and knowledgeable towards the customers. Lastly, it would be almost required to use the same screener if possible, for aspects of reliability and validity. Make sure the screener is trained and knows what specific information you are looking for and if he/she provides good information and data, then stick to that one screener. In today’s digitized networked world and the accessibility of information, it would be fairly easy to train the HR managers or specialists to be as effective or even more than outsourcing the background checks. One main point I want to emphasize on this aspect is social media. In today’s personal and business life, social media is almost essential to the business and the company in terms of advertising and networking. Social media including but not limited to: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google +, and LinkedIn are the most popular ones that enable people to gather almost any information necessary ranging from marital status to the individuals favorite movies and books. If the HR managers were trained to use these certain media outlets to gather information, it would be in most cases accurate and reliable because the information is being personally provided by the individual, and the potential legal issues of obtaining certain information would be nullified because they are open to the public. Ultimately, there will be a few cases where background checks have to be outsourced for certain reasons, but it would be in the best interest of the company to keep the background checks to inside the HR to provide reliability and control. HR is a constant growing and changing field so with proper training in growing trends such as social media, HR can be used as a competitive advantage to save the extra costs of outsourcing tasks. Essentially, who knows the companies culture and values better than the people that essentially run the mechanics of the company?