Though governed – and sometimes constrained – by laws such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), preemployment background investigations remain a critical step for employers who want to ensure candidates for significant and/or sensitive positions have the requisite integrity, honesty and experience that will lead to positive job performance. In this case, our FCRA-compliant intelligence helped expose a top candidate’s dishonesty and steered our client toward a more qualified and trustworthy candidate.
The Problem
Our client, a law firm working to help a state government agency seek and hire a candidate for a newly created position working in a prison system, sought to learn more about the backgrounds of several candidates for the role in advance of their interviews. The law firm sought to understand whether the candidates had the relevant professional experience for the role as well as whether they had any personal or professional controversies or ongoing issues that would negatively affect their performance or the public’s perception of their appointment.
Our Solution
In compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and other state and local laws, we began our public records research into the candidates, beginning with the state agency’s top choice for the role, a local who had been working with adult and youth inmates in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors for many years. We immediately identified several key findings within the relevant reporting years, including that the candidate had several pending credit-related cases filed against him regarding outstanding debts and had been divorced multiple times, with one former partner filing a petition for an order of protection against him. We also identified potentially inappropriate content posted by the candidate on social media, including content pertaining to children. In addition, we identified information indicating the subject had inflated several of his previous employment positions and responsibilities, likely to appear more qualified for the role in question.
We reported our findings to the law firm, whose lead attorney subsequently approached their interview with the candidate armed with our intelligence.
The Outcome
During the attorney’s interview with this candidate, they explicitly asked him multiple questions regarding whether he was named as a party in any ongoing litigation and whether he posted on certain social media platforms, which the candidate emphatically denied. When the attorney presented the candidate with our findings, which directly contradicted his story, he immediately admitted to lying to the interviewing attorney and apologized. Given the sensitive nature of the role, this was a significant event that gave the state agency pause and ultimately led it to consider other candidates for the role.