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| Frequently Asked Questions |
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Here are some of the most common questions
requested of APSCREEN during our daily sales calls. This
information is provided to you in the hope that you can
have a better understanding of our company, and our services.
Q: Why should our company use
APSCREEN?
A: APSCREEN is the oldest,
continuously operated Factual Employment Screening firm
in the U.S.
Since 1980, APSCREEN has provided
consultation, education and employment screening to thousands
of large, medium and small firms.
Our Founder, Thomas C. Lawson has been referred to as one
of the world’s foremost authorities on the topic of Factual
Employment Screening, and is presently the Country’s most
recognized expert witness on matters of Improper Employment
Screening, and Fair Credit Reporting Act compliance. (Source
– The Complete Workplace Violence Prevention Reporter, Gaming
and Wagering Business, Public Personnel Management)
Our firm is a 26-year-old company in a ten-year-old industry.
Why wouldn’t your company use APSCREEN?
Q: How do you conduct your Criminal research?
A: Since 1980, APSCREEN has
provided Criminal searches on only one basis – hand-searched
records at the applicable jurisdiction(s) of pertinence
to the residence history of the subject.
APSCREEN does not use database
criminal checks, nor do we subscribe to the term “on-site”
searches, since “on-site” is an industry term, and not a
true representation of the search you will get. Only hand
searches at the applicable jurisdiction will reveal the
true history of a subject’s criminal convictions in a particular
jurisdiction.
Additionally, APSCREEN chooses
to search all applicable Court levels in the jurisdiction,
ensuring a complete report of a subject’s conviction history,
whether or not the subject has been convicted of a misdemeanor,
felony, or federal crime.
Q: How does APSCREEN
know where to look for criminal convictions?
A: Good question! APSCREEN
conducts an extensive, thorough multi-step Candidate Identification
Process in order to fully and thoroughly identify the candidate’s
name, prior address history, aliases, and so on. This ID
process is conducted in conjunction with proprietary forms
provided to our clients who initiate the ID process. APSCREEN’s
process is to eliminate candidacy during the application
process in order to provide the employer with a retaliation-proof
method of screening out undesirable candidates because of
the omission of material information pertaining to their
identity.
Instead of using a simple social security trace, as most
of our competitors use, APSCREEN has compiled a proprietary
assemblage of no less than nine identification products
(at a minimum) in order to thoroughly identify the candidate.
It is no wonder that APSCREEN discovers omitted information
on approximately 60% of the applications processed on a
daily basis.
Q: Is APSCREEN compliant
with all applicable Privacy statutes?
A: APSCREEN is not only compliant
with the FACTA, FCRA; CCRRA, and G-L-B, but has extensive
published works on the topic. Our Founder, Tom Lawson regularly
speaks writes articles and gives expert witness testimony
on the topic.
APSCREEN not only provides
it’s clients with state-of-the art forms and procedures
designed to screen prospective employees, but is well known
in the Consumer Reporting Industry as being on the cutting
edge of forward-compliance, a concept foreign to it’s competitors.
APSCREEN was getting signed
consents from its clients before most employment screening
firms were in business. We set the standard, and that is
why we continue to get re-certified.
Q: Why is APSCREEN
seemingly more costly than it’s competitors?
A: APSCREEN is actually about
one-half of the price of our nearest LEGITIMATE competitors’
“apples-to-apples” product, which makes us the least expensive
game in town.
In truth, the employment screening business is filled with
mystery, which we will dispel right now.
First, there are two kinds of screening firms:
1. Marketing firms 97%
2. True Employment Screeners 3%
Marketing firms are usually found in the low end of the
price spectrum, between $18 to $40 for everything under
the Sun. The term “index dates” are foreign to them.
True employment screeners are firms, which tell the truth
about what you are getting in very simple terms, and charge
accordingly.
There is a big disparity in these two industries, and be
careful, because the marketing firms are interested in only
two things YOUR MONEY, and CHEAP INFORMATION.
If you really analyze an employment screening report, you
will see that it is made up of modules of information, which,
when compiled properly give a clear view into the way in
which a person conducts his or her life outside of the workplace.
This “view” is important, because think tanks like the Rand
Corporation, and Stanford Research Institute have confirmed
through numerous studies “…that people behave on the job,
mostly in the way they behave off of the job, once they
have settled in…” (Rand, 1982, SRI, 1987).
This, of course, forms much of the basis for the need for
employment screening, along with the perceived need by an
employer to curtail possible negligent hiring by creating
a safe workplace, ultimately by hiring non-criminals.
This is not rocket science. An employer must know the candidate’s
identity, his or her financial attitudes. Driving habits,
and criminal history, as well as whether or not he or she
has been truthful in the presentation of prior employment
and education information.
Worker’s Compensation records are a foolish endeavor because
they are neither complete, accurate, or a true indication
of a person’s veracity as to a claim, not to mention, the
only Worker’s Compensation information available in the
public records are appeals not the claim history, so what
do you really get upon which you will base your decision?
– JUNK!
So with this knowledge, how do you determine good screening
versus bad screening?
Well, first you need to know just how thoroughly the firm
will identify the candidate. Like one credit report, one
or two social security traces cannot tell the whole story.
Next, why would you only want one employment credit report,
when government agencies like the Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac Loan Board require reports from all three credit bureaus
before it makes a decision to loan money on a secured mortgage?
The only reason they cite in their regulations is because
ONE CREDIT REPORT DOES NOT TELL THE COMPLETE FINANCIAL STORY.
Of course, a driving history is important, not only because
of possible DUIs and other heinous driving acts, but what
about a candidate having a suspended or revoked license?
How will he or she get to work? Will they drive their car,
and get into an accident on company time, and be later determined
by Plaintiff’s Counsel to be an Agent of the Company?
And Criminal. How can you be sure that the candidate has
no conviction history if you don’t go to the absolute source
of the records, the Clerk of the applicable Court? Few are
aware that database criminal checks are purveyed at the
wholesale level and are not designed to be anything more
than a lead generator, not a decisional tool. Why do you
think they are so inexpensive? BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT GETTING
THE WHOLE STORY!
Employment and Education verifications are predictable,
and not complicated. Either you get the information, or
you don’t, so this is not a gauge of a competent screener,
and with the limitations placed upon verification departments
these days, it’s a wonder anything is conveyed.
Q: Why are there so many employment-screening firms
out there, I saw over 20+ vendors at the last SHRM conference?
A: Why not? It’s an easy business to get into and it is
profitable. In fact, a person can be in the employment screening
business in their living room, since just about everything
they will need to resell to you is available to them over
the Internet, or several “on-line” type of information (database)
purveyors. Problem is, you never know where the information
is really coming from, do you?
Q: OK, how do I know where
APSCREEN gets its information?
A: Simple. As a member of many national and worldwide professional
research and investigative organizations,
APSCREEN is readily accountable,
and is known to conduct research not only by it’s clients,
but also by it’s sources, located at every Court in the
land. As Charter members of the Public Record Provider Network,
and long standing members of the National Public Record
Research Association, we are in the Courts, daily searching
other records, so criminal records are a natural for us
to research. We also research criminal records for other
firms who don’t want to, or don’t have the resources to
search them themselves. For us, research is easier than
compilation, so we elect to research, not compile.
Also, since no database compilation is ever 100% complete,
when migrated into a centralized data format, we only see
problems with databases, because, anything less than 100%
is incomplete, which results in an incompetent search.
Additionally, APSCREEN, as
a Bureau-Certified Consumer Reporting Agency has direct
relationships with all 50 state’s Motor Vehicle Departments,
and all three major credit bureaus, as well as over 900
other repository-based providers for identity reports, and
other information types such as UCC searches, litigation
histories, etc.
Well known Labor Lawyer Lee Paterson once told our Founder:
“Your best selling point, Tom, is to tell your prospective
customers that you’ve never been sued”
Q: How can APSCREEN
provide such a high level of quality, at admittedly,
half of the price of its nearest competitor?
A: Buying power. We buy Credit reports at sometimes one-third
of the market rate because we are a licensed credit bureau,
and because we have been buying these reports for 26 years.
We also buy our driving histories at a fraction of our competitors,
and when buying criminal records, we only use fellow PRRN,
or NPRRA research firms which all discount to each other
because we are an Industry Cooperative.
We also establish a national norm for pricing, which affords
the customer an anticipated cost for all of their reports,
rather than an unpredictable cost structure, which is hard
to budget for. Simply put, this means that we have an average
price for criminal checks, which could be high in some areas,
and low in other areas. This means that the customer benefits
from average pricing, rather than area-sensitive pricing.
When you have thousands of clients in all parts of the Country,
the offsets exist for available profit for us, no matter
where we do the research. A big client base benefits all
of the clients, equally.
Q: How about Customer Service? Do you pamper your customers,
or treat them like Sheep, with low-paid telephone clerks.
A: We let our customers answer that question, just ask us
for a reference!
Q: What are some of the laws
that consumers should be aware of ?
A: Go to our
Consumer page for more
information. |
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