Due Diligence for Employers with Drivers

Do you have individuals driving company cars or driving personal cars for business purposes? Avoid a negligent hiring lawsuit by running a pre-employment driving record checks and avoid negligent retention lawsuits by conducting annual, and even better, bi-annual driving record checks to ensure your employees have not been involved in serious infractions or lost their…

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Steps HR can take to avoid a lawsuit

According to an article in law.com, the failure of a background vendor, Checkr, and their clients to follow Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) guidelines resulted in a complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York on August 27, 2021 against the vendor, Uber and Lyft. The complaint claimed that Checkr provided inaccurate information to Uber and…

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Applicant tracking systems

Companies that rely on an automated hiring process A Harvard Business School study “Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent” found that automated hiring processes “regularly eliminate all but those candidates who most closely match the job requirements specified” and “those workers are thus hidden from consideration by the design and implementation of the very processes that were meant to maximize…

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Criminal History and Job Advertising

The New Jersey Office of the Attorney General and the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development investigated practices of employers and found fifteen companies were including language about the criminal history of applicants in their job advertisements. The employers were required to make changes to their hiring practices. The New Jersey “Ban the Box”…

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NY Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act Drug Screening

Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) was signed into law on March 31, 2021, and legalized marijuana use and possession for adults who are at least 21 years old or older. The New York Department of Labor (DOL) published new guidelines and confirmed that employers cannot drug test most workers for the use of marijuana. The DOL guidance answered…

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California Fair-Chance Act

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) are taking a carrot and stick to the issue of the California Fair Chance Act. The DFEH is encouraging individuals to file complaints with the department and report advertising or processes in violation with this Act. The DFEH is offering a Fair Chance Act toolkit of resources and interactive training…

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Algorithms and bias

Time is money and, unfortunately for companies, hiring new employees takes significant time. Hiring decisions are also rife with human bias, leading some organizations to hand off at least part of their employee searches to outside tech companies who screen applicants with machine learning algorithms. If humans have such a hard time finding the best…

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Criminal research errors

How is it possible that a the results of a criminal record search can be accurately depicted by one background vendor as “clear” and another vendor reports records to the employer that are not associated with the same candidate.  Expunged records, criminal cases that were dismissed, or the individual successfully completed a pretrial intervention program…

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How far back is your vendor searching for a criminal record?

Most background vendors only conduct a search for a criminal that occurred within the past seven years? How far back does your vendor search? TABB INC. searches for records in each jurisdiction for as far back as the source holds records. TABB INC. will only report records that are developed in accordance with FCRA and…

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Instant criminal check failures

A lawsuit alleges that a candidate lost a job opportunity due to an error developed during the criminal search. The results reported to the employer “had two personal identifiers that did not match our client” according to Alexis Lehmann, Esq. Inaccurate criminal record results provided to employers are a growing concern when vendors utilize what…

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Expunge criminal records

The elephant in the room for candidates who have a prior interaction with the criminal court system is how to approach this topic prior to applying for employment. Far too many candidates fail to deal with a situation that can come back to haunt them. Many often believe that because they pled to a lesser…

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Negligent hiring and negligent referral

Article by KURT BLUMENAU OF THE MORNING CALl The following article highlights the importance conducting thorough pre-employment background checks and employment verifications. When there is a greater potential of harm to the public, or employees, the scope of the pre-employment investigation should be expanded for positions dealing with a vulnerable population. William Davis, a Registered…

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States Initiatives – Sealing criminal records from public view

Due to the adverse impact a criminal record may have on an individual to obtain employment, many states are taking a new look at their policies relating to the ability for an individual to expunge their criminal record. Several states have expanded the types of offenses that can be expunged and shorten the waiting period…

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Candidates caught in the National Criminal Search conundrum

The background industry promotes what is called a National Criminal Search, a proprietary database of information scraped from the Internet that is neither national nor complete. So many employers utilize this inferior product, and actual criminal records are missed leading the candidate to the false impression that they do not have a criminal record. This…

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Artificial Intelligence Hiring Platform Overview

Artificial Intelligence and Automated Hiring Platforms- The future of recruiting, or is it? As our society rushes in to develop computerized business solutions for every activity conducted by humans, there is often a need to pause and reflect on developments. Everyone wants the Holy Grail, a computer platform that will do the work for us…

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Data mining criminal records and National Criminal Databases

What is the problem with this type of data mining? Mined police blotters, mugshots and correctional records are stored data, meaning that this information is pulled into searchable database and the sources from which they are obtained do not track the ultimate final disposition of a criminal case. If a case was a case dismissed,…

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Uber, Lyft and Nationwide Criminal Record Checks

How can this happen? Uber and Lyft conduct criminal background checks don’t they? In Portland, some of the Uber and Lyft drivers that are picking up passengers, many times late at night, actually have serious traffic violations and two were felons convicted of sexual assault and assault with intent to murder. These drivers were found by “random checks” conducted on…

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State Initiatives – Sealing criminal records from public view

Due to the adverse impact a criminal record may have on an individual to obtain employment, many states are taking a new look at their policies relating to the ability for an individual to expunge their criminal record. Several states have expanded the types of offenses that can be expunged and shorten the waiting period…

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How too many background vendors conduct business

The following is an excerpt from investigative reporter Rosalind Adams May 2019 article entitled, “A Lyft driver with a criminal record was charged with rape. So why was he even behind the wheel? The dominant player in the industry, Sterling Talent Solutions, is an unseen component of how thousands of companies hire workers. Behind the…

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Legal issue over Artificial Intelligence

Facebook Business tools faced a class action lawsuit in 2016 alleging that it “enable and encourage discrimination by excluding African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans but not white Americans from receiving advertisements for relevant opportunities.” Another Facebook algorithm, Lookalike Audiences, highlighted Facebook users in advertisements as candidates to potential employers that were demographically identical to their existing…

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