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Discover What Every Employer Needs to Know
About the Legal Use of a Background Check to
Hire the Right Candidate &
How to
Protect Your Company from Negligent Hiring Lawsuits
Advice from an Expert!
Tom Lawson, CEO, CFE, CII & Expert Witness
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It all started with APSCREEN
Some frank talk about employment
screening … Brace yourself!
Who we are:
APSCREEN (The Applicant
Screening Company of America, Incorporated) is the oldest,
continuously operated factual employment screening
company in the United States, formed in Los Angeles
on January 1, 1980, and incorporated in California on July
5, 1988 by Thomas C. Lawson, CFE, CII.
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"No other company compares to
APSCREEN. They were the first and are still the
best. Their customer service is superior and their
background screeners are expertly trained. You get
a thorough job done in a forward-compliant environment,
and that is a must when it comes to hiring people
in today's workplace environment. "
Terry LaMotte
-Sares-Regis Group
Support Our Veterans
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APSCREEN is, was and
always has been first and foremost a Factual Employment
Screening firm in the form of a Consumer Reporting
Agency, and always has been. We don’t skirt that issue to
avoid Consumer Protection Laws, in order to sell incomplete
decisional information that should be avoided in the employment
setting. We helped write the rules, so we live by the rules.
Non-CRA’s who sell incompetent (non- “index date”) end-user
criminal data for employment decisions are dangerous to
the American workplace plain and simple.
APSCREEN was in the
employment screening business when there
was no background check industry, in fact over a decade
and a half before it became fashionable to be in the
background screening business. When we started, there were
two other national firms, one of which the founder died,
and the other changed its business model to go database.
We are not nor have we ever been, a Private Investigation
firm reinvented to suggest longevity in this discipline
or otherwise.
Much of the published works on the topic have roots in previously
published works by and about our founder, Thomas C. Lawson,
widely considered a pioneer and "modern-day guru of
employment screening" (according to W.
Barry Nixon in his book Background
Screening and Investigations.
With humility and respect to the reader, this is asserted
because we are extremely tired and wary of the corporate
background check industry hype that leads clients astray
and gives a false sense of applicant selection security
in the name of unethical profits.
The time has come to stand up for doing
background checks the right
way! And
to reveal the truth about that's out there.
What we do:
First, we thoroughly identify the candidate. The Law Enforcement
community will tell you that the single most important aspect
to conducting inquiries on suspects is to thoroughly
identify them. If you don’t know who your candidate
really is, or where they have been, you cannot determine
applicable historical aspects potentially germane to their
candidacy. Translated? If you don’t know who they are, or
where they’ve been, you can’t find out the extent of their
crimes.
APSCREEN performs between 9 and 21 processes
to determine identity and prior addresses. Our process reveals
that over 60% of the applications received daily from our
clients contain false and/or omitted identification components,
essential in determining the who and where. If the candidate’s
name is ‘Jones’ and they give you ‘Smith’ and nobody checks
that out, you will miss the convictions on Smith, and you
get a criminal through your doors who could rape the women,
molest the children and steal from you. One $2 social security
trace will not accomplish this.
Harsh? You bet - so are the criminals who
we do our best to keep away from your front door. Many do
not know the extent of the duty a business owner has to
protect not only the fellow employees in the workplace but
the customers as well. It’s actually the law so how can
you ensure factual compliance with a cheap and incompetent
background check?
We believe that the industry lost its way from its mid-1990s
beginning with the proliferation of easy or
instant background checks available over the
internet. Of course, this concept isn’t new – we lost a
big health care provider account in 1982 to an ex-motorcycle
cop who bought the Los Angeles County Superior Court microfiche
for $5.60 and resold searches at 5 bucks each.
That ultimately led to the hiring of a hospital orderly
who ended up calling-up female patients on the phone while
on his mid-day break with the lab results of their pap smears
(which he gained access to through his daily assigned task
of carrying them from the lab to the doctor’s offices in
the main hospital), so he could tell them they had cancer,
especially if they didn’t. Two women committed suicide,
12 other families were forever scarred and that was our
founder’s first negligent hiring expert witness case, settling
for approximately $14 million.
Click
here for some of our more recent cases.
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"We have found dozens of potential
candidates for employment that we felt would have
been a quality hire.
That was until we ran a background
check through APSCREEN, only to
discover they had criminal records. We are still
using APSCREEN today."
Michele Dumalski
-Yosemite Waters
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APSCREEN screens candidates
under a three disciplines: Aerospace, MILSPEC and Police,
through a combination of HANDS-ON, EYES-ON processes on
EVERY application at EVERY step.
Our criminal checks are hand-searched at every jurisdiction
that we can identify, and only through title-grade/NPRRA/PRRN
level researchers who go directly to the courts every day.
We only use proprietary criminal index databases in order
to generate leads, not determine the final extent of criminal
activities. We do not believe in private criminal repositories
for decisional use because they are not accurate, and they
are not complete; end of story. We also believe that while
some online court-provided databases are pretty good, no
matter how good they are, you will still see cops at the
courthouse, verifying the files before they testify under
oath. That is our standard as well.
We do, however believe in private industry’s ability to
merge information into widely searchable databases that
provide excellent cross-referencing tools, but neither ARE
NOT nor WILL EVER BE a replacement for searching the public
record by hand at the court clerk’s counter.
If you buy into the concept of doing cheap background checks,
you will get what you pay for. Luckily, the industry is
turning around in the aftermath of the corporate players
leaving after raping the employment screening
marketplace, screwing it up for long-term, legitimate players,
and worst of all, putting criminals into the workplace which
many times has resulted in the basis for our expert witness
testimony on the subjects of Negligent Hiring and Retention.
We understand that you may end up spending many times the
improperly perceived cost to do a good background check,
but with negligent hiring lawsuit settlements and awards
in the millions of dollars, where is the economy if you
gamble with a cheap
background check
and lose? All it takes is one bad hire and you’re
screwed and likely fired!
We don’t believe in going offshore either. India is not
where we want our customer service people - Rancho Santa
Margarita, California, USA is. We recently joined the new
Concerned CRA’s Professional Association to drive these
points home.
APSCREEN proudly represents
all three major credit bureaus, as a Certified Reseller
of Experian, Transunion and Equifax because we believe (contrary
to our opinion of the EEOC’s recent false and misleading
statements about credit reports having a disparate impact
on certain races) that a credit report is a
key component in determining
many things not just payment history.
We have published letters to the editor at HR Magazine to
make our point. APSCREEN
believes that it makes no difference if a person is
white, black, brown or purple a default is a default. Sure
almost everyone has financial hardship at some time in their
lives, so what! It’s the repeat offenders that
interest us. Who wants an employee who is getting
creditor calls at all hours of the night because they habitually
can't manage their finances?
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"APSCREEN gets the results
quickly and everyone that we've dealt with since
1997 has been very courteous and professional.
We wouldn't use any
other company for background checks and highly recommend
them."
Phyllis Crofford
- FDC Management
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While we understand that there is now pending legislation
to remove credit reports from employment decisions, we support
the fight in concert with the three major credit bureaus
to preserve this critical decisional tool. Notwithstanding
any law, there will ALWAYS be a way to legally incorporate
many if not most of the critical employment-based historical
information components contained in a credit report other
than credit history into your decision should payment histories
be outlawed. That’s our job and our commitment.
We also provide driving histories because like credit reports,
the RAND Corporation and Stanford Research Institute concluded
in the 1970s that these reports are “clear determinants
of societal responsibility attitudes.” With criminal histories,
there are no better predictors of workplace attitudes in
our humble, 30-year opinion.
Who we associate with
and why:
National Association of Professional Background
Screeners (NAPBS) – We are a Founding member
of NAPBS and our friend, Les Rosen, albeit a relative newcomer
(late 1990s) is a highly ethical purveyor who has written
more than we have on the topic in recent years. Les helped
form this organization, and instigated its lobbying efforts
on behalf of legitimate employment screeners even if unethical
purveyors have also benefited.
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE)
– We are a Life Member since 1993 and the longest-serving
member of the Editorial Review Board of FRAUD Magazine.
This organization has 40,000 members worldwide and has only
been in business since 1989. There is no finer organization
dedicated to the eradication of fraud, or who has more commingled
tentacles in the private sector and law enforcement other
than ASIS, and frankly in our view, the ACFE has done a
better job of merging the two. We are committed to the ACFE
for life.
American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS)
-- Chairman Emeritus (1990) Orange County Chapter
(founding chapter) and a member since 1981. ASIS is the
rock steady association of private security professionals
who made up much of our client base in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM)
-- Professional Member not Vendor member since 1981 through
PIRA, and subsequent direct membership. SHRM is a group
of over 80,000 HR professionals. Professional membership
signifies a practicing Human Resources Management Professional
instead of just a salesman of HR-related products. SHRM
is the root of the assemblage of the HR world. As with all
HR practitioners, we need them for innumerable reasons.
Professionals in Human Resources Management (PIHRA)
-- Professional Member not Vendor member since 1981 and
1986. PIHRA is a Los Angeles-based large HR association.
Not always happy with their policies but always happy with
the members many of whom are dear friends and whom share
a common goal of excellent HR management styles.
CALHR – Listserv Member run by our friend
Max Wagoner who has created a simple list serve where we
get more daily, no BS, realistic, reasonable, nuts & bolts,
meat & potatoes local HR practice information than anywhere
else.
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Tom Lawson founded APSCREEN in 1980 and is
the individual who pioneered the concept of background
checks for employment screening.
Lawson is also one of the first Expert Witnesses
to work on Negligent Hiring lawsuits.
His first clients came from the aerospace industry
and they demanded the highest level of professional
background checks, the same type of check still
provided today.
Lawson currently serves on the Editorial Review
Board for FRAUD Magazine and has numerous notable
publications including Business Week, Los Angeles
Times, Orange County Register, Orange County Business
Journal, as well as CBS syndicated talk radio and
interviews with ABC's American Agenda and NBC's
Extra.
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National Public Record Research Association (NPRRA)
– Member. This was the public record research group that
started it all – cut its teeth in UCC research decades ago.
Like the PRRN, the NPRRA is a source for quality court researchers
throughout the U.S. who maintain an ethical and professional
standard of going to the courts every day, rather than just
going online. Banks are the main source of work for the
NPRRA. Lending decisions are made on this research and as
a result, it had better be thorough.
Public Record Retriever Network (PRRN)
-- Founding Member. Mike Sankey created this platform for
the standardization of the public record research discipline,
and he maintains it in grand style. Mike started the first
online, 50-state DMV assemblage, sold it and revolutionized
the public record industry just for the heck of it.
Council of International Investigators (CII)
– Certified Member since 1987.
World Association of Detectives – Member
World Investigators Network – Member
We stay on board with the CII,
WAD and WIN because these three
groups represent contacts, affiliations and solid, proven
& ethical sources in all free ports and not-so-free ports,
worldwide.
When we need to go offshore, we go here.
Forensic Expert Witness Association (FEWA)
– Expert Witness Member. This is the best interdisciplinary
Expert Witness fellowship we have found.
What we Provide:
- Positive Candidate Identification®™
- Employment credit reports
- Criminal checks at all three
levels
- Driving histories
- Referencing
- Employment verification
- Referred drug testing (we’re
not a drug testing lab – who are they kidding
– best to leave this test to qualified parties)
- Employment Screening
Policy
- File security set-up
- Free state-of-the-art formology
- Free Education
- Expert Witness testimony
...and the best customer
service on the planet!
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7,000 APSCREEN clients requesting
tens of millions of background checks since 1980 can’t be
wrong.
Spend the money and do the job right!
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