July 20, 2021
Back to the Talent Tide Podcast Page
Description
In this episode, In this episode, Chris talks with Stewart Gott about what goes on behind the scenes of background checks. Stewart Gott is a National Account Executive for Data Facts based out of Nashville, TN. He previously spent 6 years in the staffing industry. He is a graduate of Lipscomb University where he received his degrees in Marketing and Management. Growing up and starting his career in the Nashville area, Stewart has become an expert on best practices in surrounding FCRA compliance, pre-employment screening, & ongoing monitoring.
Transcript
Chris
Hello, and welcome to the talent tide podcast the show that ensures you have the information you need to adapt and evolve your workplace culture as you ride the wave of change and talent management. I’m your host, Chris Nichols. And today we’re going to be talking about the world of onboarding and pre employment screening. We’ll discuss post hire checks, what actually happens in the background screen and how the right vendor can help you hire and retain great employees. And at the end, there’ll be a special surprise. I’d like to welcome Stuart Gott from Data Facts. He is the National account executive there. He previously spent six years in the staffing industry. He’s a graduate of Lipscomb University, where he received his degrees in marketing and management. Growing up and starting his career in the Nashville area. Stewart has become an expert on best practices surrounding FCRA compliance, and pre employment screening as well as ongoing monitoring. Welcome to the talent tide podcast. Stuart, how are you today?
Stewart Gott
Doing good, Chris. Thanks for having me, man. I’ve been hearing about this podcast for a while. So I’m excited to be here.
Chris
Well, we’re thrilled to have you. I’ve known Stuart for Gosh, probably three or three to five years now, I don’t know when we first met. But I really enjoy what data facts does, I find that, from my experience, they are one of the more innovative organizations in this pre employment area. And he’s the organization as someone that I often refer people to whenever they’re going through this process. So I’m excited to talk with you today about pre employment screening and background checks and, and compliance. The things that most people don’t want to talk about Stewart
Stewart Gott
No, no, it’s not a it’s not a sexy subject. Yeah, no, it’s it’s, it’s something everybody should know, when especially when it comes to HR, it’s something you guys deal with every day. So I just kind of thought it’d be a good idea to show everybody what actually happens.
Chris
And it’s necessary, and everybody does it. Right. So I guess from there, everyone does background screening, but I’m not sure many people actually know what it is, right? I mean, we understand that if we get a new job, we have to go through it ourself. And we find it to be an annoying process to go through. Right? Nobody wants to go to a to get a drug test done. You know, nobody wants to have to leave work early to go get these things taken care of if they have to, or, or whatever steps that they have to jump through. So can you just share with our listeners? What pre employment screening actually is?
Stewart Gott
Yeah, so pre employment screening. When it comes down to it, what you’re really doing is just getting a glimpse into a person’s past that is the bare bones of what it is. But what we’re actually doing is going back into their background and figuring out what kind of a person this person is, yeah, they might have been reformed, but you can’t you want to know what’s what’s what’s what they’ve done in the past. I remember when I was first interviewing for this job, I thought, Oh, this is going to be easy. I mean, this is when it comes to background checks. And all they’re doing is going and accessing a database, because it’s 2020 2021. Well, it was like 2015 at that point, but I just thought, you know, technology has come a long way. So people should be able to just access one database and get a glimpse of every everybody’s past couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean, I remember when I went to go interview for my job at jet data facts, they had already run a background check on me. And since we do all the screens, they ran a extremely thorough background check. And I remember sitting there across the table from my CEO, and she had a stack of papers about an inch thick, that are all kinds of things I didn’t even know about myself. So it was pretty eye opening at that point. And then shortly after I got started just digging in and figuring out what we actually do. And what from from a checking standpoint, what databases we have access to it was extremely eye opening. So
Chris
Was there anything in that first background check that you didn’t want to know was in there?
Stewart Gott
I will say there was a debt that I had that I didn’t even know I had and it was actually something from a when I got my identity stolen a couple years before and it was sitting there on my ship. They were they’d run a credit check on me just to make sure that I was sound financially. And I asked for to look at it after I got hired and I didn’t even know I had this debt sitting out there. So yeah So that was a fun cleanup job, by the way.
Chris
Um, well tell me a little bit about what makes a strong partner in this industry because there are there are a ton of pre employment companies out there, right? And I don’t want it to be, you know, a Data Facts sale. But if you could just tell me what makes a good partner?
Stewart Gott
Yeah, so I don’t want to plug us at all. I know, that’s not what this is about. This is more about education. But I talk to people every day that are struggling with their current vendor, or just kind of looking to see what else is out there and seeing how their services or products or processes could can improve. And you come across it with these huge, massive corporations, I’m not going to name them by name, but they really get abused by these massive corporations. And when I when I say abused, I’m talking about, you know, their information not being secure their, their customer service, just being poor. What makes a really good partner, when it comes to this is people going the extra mile. I mean, we’re like I said, this is not a fun topic. This is not an easy topic to talk about. But whenever a you you order a background check, and it’s taking two weeks to come back. And you’ve got a person sitting there waiting to start and come on board with you. And you can’t bring them on board, because background checks. Now back, you want answers on why that’s happening. And so we Oh, well, excuse me, a good vendor makes it easy for you to get those answers. So
Chris
sure, yeah. You mentioned going the extra mile, like, what is the extra mile? I could I wouldn’t know, right? If I’m if I’m the leader in my organization, say, you know, Vice President of Operations, and it’s taken three weeks to be able to get this new process engineer started, because their background check hasn’t come back. Who whose heads should be rolling in that situation? Right? What to do about it? Yeah,
Stewart Gott
so we’ll talk about this here in a few minutes, I hope. But there’s a lot of factors that go into what happens when a background check is ordered. And the amount of hands and eyes that that goes through is astounding. Because we are dependent whenever we’re going after files or going after records, we’re dependent on three or four different people to get those records back. And if there’s any kind of glitch in the system, or any kind of person that got sick that day. That’s where the delays can come. And so we do our best to well, good vendors, excuse me, good vendors do their best to make sure that those glitches are minimized and make sure that those delays are minimized by building relationships with those people that they’re dependent on.
Chris
So thanks for the segue there. What happens in the background screening process? I know a little bit about it. And I and it was fascinating, the first time that I did learn, I couldn’t believe the number of steps that that you all have to go through and how archaic It is, in some instances, right? So can you share with with our listeners, what actually does happen? Yeah, so
Stewart Gott
I’ll excuse my language, but dumb it down. I’m not calling anybody out there dumb by any means. And if I if I get a little confusing, because I’m using industry specific terms, please stop me. But so whenever you order a background check, usually, and I’ll tell you how it works with us. But and I will say that it’s probably pretty similar with other vendors as well. When you were sort of background check, it goes into a portal, of course you order it. And then out of that portal, there’s actually human beings on the other side that actually take a look and put in manually enter in the order and manually go out and check these databases. From a county level perspective, so we start out very broad, we look at the nationwide picture. That’s called the National criminal database check, or there’s a bunch of other terms for it, but we all kind of pull from the same database to start off, I call it the Swiss cheese search, because this database has counties and databases that report to it, there’s 1000s of them. But it’s only from a county level perspective, it’s only hitting very metropolitan areas. So for instance, if you’re in Davidson County, that’s going to pop up on this national criminal check. But if if you’re if you’ve committed a crime up down in Williamson County, a county down below us 15 minutes away, it won’t be reported in that. So we start out there, start off very, very broad and then trace their social security number to specific counties of where they’ve worked. They’ve played, they’ve gone on vacation, they’ve lived, of course, but we go and track those locations and pull records from those locations. And when you go to pull those records from those locations, we start out from a great very, we go to a very granular level, and go to the county levels. And these counties, you wouldn’t believe it, but most of them are. Well, I don’t want to say most I will say a lot of them are electronic databases, but a lot of them are not. And when I say non electronic databases, that requires us to send somebody to the courthouse to actually go and access their database, whether that be electronically, or go to the filing cabinet, dusty filing cabinet in the back and go search for this person’s name in that filing cabinet for the record that’s on file there for their court, their court record or whatever it is, we have to we have, we usually have to pay somebody to go out there and do this. And that’s when it can, that’s what you can hit the snag. Because if Susie, who is the county clerk at this Court’s office is out of work that day, or if she just has a stack of papers on her desk, and she doesn’t feel like getting to him that day, then we’re sitting here waiting on Susie to find some motivation. So we might have to bring that batch of cookies or something like that. Um, but yeah, so that’s, that’s where from, from a process standpoint, that’s where we start. And then once we get those records back, we have to double check that those records are able to be reported to the employer, the prospective employer, we have to make sure that you guys are staying compliant and you’re not seeing stuff you shouldn’t see, we have to make sure that they’re inside the scope that you’re wanting to see, some people want to see seven years of background check. Some people want to see 10, some people only want to see felonies, they don’t care about misdemeanors. So we kind of have to figure out what the matrix looks like when it comes to what you guys want to see and what you’re able to see. And then we have to figure out if it’s the correct person that we’re reporting on, there might be a John Smith that lived in a certain county, but there was 18, other John Smiths. So we have to it goes through about I would say five to six, each report goes through about five to six different eyes on our end, specifically just Data Facts, before it actually goes to you and comes back through the system to you.
Chris
Yeah, that part is fascinating to me growing up in a small, small community. And I know that whenever we first worked, whenever I first worked with data facts, and my current organization did not disclaimer, but so in my experience working with you all, we had a situation where we had a client that was in a very rural part of Tennessee. And if I remember correctly, somebody had to drive like an hour and a half to that courthouse, like once a week for us to go to the courthouse and it was I don’t I don’t think they were like probably there either. And, and so I I just want to make it known to our listeners that it’s not uncommon to have to go through paper files still yet, in a lot of
Stewart Gott
Oh, it is it, I wouldn’t say it’s not uncommon. It’s common that that happens. Yeah. So I mean, especially when you’re dealing with rural areas, anything outside of a very metropolitan area, more than likely, it is still a very manual process to get these records. Right.
Chris
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve covered some things that at a fairly high level, which I think most people understand what a background check to be, and kind of the layman’s term, but I know that there’s also a ton of additional work that, that screening companies can do, you know, pre employment. And so what are the options available to organizations? Right, that maybe just hit on? I don’t know, three, five to 10. If you need to know,
Stewart Gott
it all depends, excuse me, I didn’t mean to cut you off. They all depends on how granular you’re wanting to go. I mean, and a lot of times, it all depends on it also depends on your budget. Because the more granular the more granular you get, probably the more likely the more expensive it’s going to be. And also, it also depends on if you want to do a kind of reference checks or anything like that as well. As far as services go, more than likely your current vendor is able to offer these services. But I mean, you know, they might not have made, you know, made you aware of what the services are that they offer. You can do statewide checks, county level checks, federal checks, nationwide checks, those are all different databases that you can hit. And then you also have the option to do fingerprinting more than likely your current vendor doesn’t do fingerprinting or they can’t they don’t have the capability of doing fingerprinting nationwide. You kind of have to go through your state bureau of I guess TBI or your state Bureau to do the fingerprinting and I will say fingerprinting is a great tool. It’s got some some problems with it. And we can get into that if you’d like to. But, um, as far as other checks that really help employers kind of hire, make sure they’re hiring quality candidates, highly recommend doing the reference checks doing the employment verifications doing the education verifications, you would not believe how many people Photoshop what are they called diplomas to do education verifications. So the only way to catch that is to actually go to the educator itself, and go and verify it with the educator. You can’t sit there and say, “Okay, well, this guy brought me his diploma. I’m good, He’s good. He’s got his degree.” No that you would not believe how many people fake that because it’s easy, just a piece of paper, you know, all they have to do is download that specific font and put their name on there. Also, with employment verifications, you wouldn’t believe how many people lie about their former employers about why they were why they got discharged there. Whether they’re re hireable there, and how long they work there. I mean, they’re the people will fill out an application to be to come work for you. And they’ll say, Oh, well, I, I just I ended there. And in February, and it’s, it’s it’s March? Well, if you go back and verify their employer, you’ll see that they you could see that they’ve been out of work for six months, and they got fired six months ago. And they’re sitting there, you know, there’s a reason they were fired, you’re more than likely wasn’t Yeah. You you get what I’m saying?
Chris
Is that something that you all are able to ask about or pridemore? Or is that were that unlike your billing? So
Stewart Gott
we actually call the employers and verify employment. So we we don’t go we don’t trust what the candidate says. I mean, yes, we do. If they’re able to provide us a W-2, or any kind of 10-99, or whatever, we will accept that. But more than likely, we’re going to try and verify it with the employer and get them to verify the dates of employment, why they were discharged all that stuff.
Chris
What what kind of options are available, Stuart for organizations to ensure that their current employees are continuing to be the I don’t know, the the outstanding citizens that that that they thought that they were when they were hired?
Stewart Gott
Yeah, so you got to think about it. Whenever you hire an employee, they are a representation of your company, whether they’re walking on the street, whether they’re sending out emails for your company, they’re a representation of your company, on or off the clock. So it’s a good question, I appreciate you asking me that. So we offer what’s what’s called post hire checks, and post hire monitoring. And most most vendors do this. But you can, you can monitor employees from a criminal aspect, you can monitor employees from a driving aspect, if you employ a bunch of drivers, you can literally on a monthly basis, say, Okay, I want to run them rather than this check on them. And it’s only going to cost you one or $2 usually, but it’ll tell you if they got a DUI that month, if they got a speeding ticket that month, any kind as far as you want to go, if you’re going to do arrest monitoring, if they got arrested, you’ll know in real time, as soon as it’s reported to the court courthouse, it gets reported to you guys. But medical monitoring for nurses and doctors, actually monitoring their licensure monitoring, whether they have any kind of noxa gets their boards or anything like that. That stuff is that it can be monitored in real time. So you can actually monitor whether a person is an upstanding citizen and a good representation of your company, whether they’re on or off the clock. One thing that we’ve done recently, and this, this ties into, on or off the clock, a very hot ticket and very popular item that we’ve been pushing lately is social media screening. So think about it. What’s a person doing on their social media, when they get home from work, or on the clock while they’re at work? We have the ability, we partner with a company that does social media screening, and they go and look and dig into a person’s social media presence. You can look as far back as five years if you want to. And especially in a time like now where you know, racism is a thing, political issues are a thing, well, excuse me, racism has been a thing. But you know, coming to the forefront and people are charged up and wanting to their voice to be heard. And they’ll take it to social media. They’ll take it to Twitter, they’ll take it to Facebook, and you don’t want people out there saying, “Okay, wait. x company will employ a person like this and that makes you guys look bad. So, social media screening has been very, very popular among employers recently, just because of the, I guess the temperature out there, I get for lack of a better word.
Chris
I’m very angry with you right now. Because while you were answering the previous question, all I could think about was the follow up about social media monitoring. And you you took it from me. But I think I do have some follow ups around that particular topic. So what are the legalities into looking into someone’s social media presence pre hire? Is there anything that maybe I’m totally missing something, but I feel like there were some protections enabled just a few years ago as well for for people, you know, social media profiles to not maybe be monitored, or maybe be checked at right, right?
Stewart Gott
So states, that’s, that’s where that’s where it gets funny is states, all they did was enact a law, saying that employers couldn’t ask employees for their social media names and passwords, so they can’t log in and look themselves. So yes, people can still set their stuff as private and where like, we might not be able to access it. Usually, there are some workarounds. But um, yeah, so that’s, that’s the only legality from an FCRA standpoint is that we can’t the employers can’t ask prospective employees for their usernames and passwords so that they can log in.
Chris
Just to clarify, I just want to make sure I’m hearing you, right? if, if, if I’m a candidate, and I am applying for a job, you could go check out my, my facebook profile and make a decision whether or not to hire me or not based upon my actions?
Stewart Gott
For sure. I mean, if you’re out there posting pictures of you with guns and bags of drugs in the app, I mean, or you’re posting, posting nudes up there. You don’t want to hire somebody that’s got a porn website. That’s your decision, it does it, it might go against the mission of your company. So you know, you don’t Yeah, you don’t want it, you want to make sure that you’re not hiring somebody that’s going against the mission or your core values as a company?
Chris
Absolutely. I think we’re seeing a lot more of that in the workplace now, like ethical standards, moral standards, like as you’re eating a as part of your your employee employment contract, right, that you can be cut loose for these types of things. And it’s usually the fine print. Right, in a employer employee handbook, you know, those things that people just sign and never actually look at?
Stewart Gott
Right, it’s all covered like social media, looking into social media is covered in your standard authorizations and disclosures that people sign to, to let an employee or employer run a background check. I mean, it’s all covered under that, because it’s seen as public information, just like court records are
Chris
absolutely and i think it’s it’s currently February 3, so we’re almost a month removed from, you know, the riots on on Capitol Hill and honest those people were sought out and in, in on social media, right to find out their people’s information. And they were, I don’t know if shamed is the right word, but they were they were put into news organizations and tied to social media profiles and then tied to their to their work profiles, right, like their LinkedIn profiles and finding out where the people are employed. And I got to think that many of those individuals probably lost their their jobs, you know, in the last year, so absolutely
Stewart Gott
cannot you cannot afford to risk in the social climate that we have right now. You cannot afford to risk your company being made look bad, or just because of what of your what something one of your employees is posting on Twitter or Facebook and stuff like that. Because, I mean we see it all the time, cancel culture, that’s, that’s happening all over the place. So
Chris
yeah, because every employee is a representative of the organization in which they work for right, it doesn’t matter the role that you have, you are an extension of their brand, for sure. Absolutely. Well, gosh, I love that topic. But we probably need to move on Stuart. Where, how do organizations like yours, help organizations hire and retain quality individuals? And I mean by that is like, not necessarily the basics of, you know, background checks, but what is it that makes a difference from a provider level that allows an organization to make better decisions on on hiring and also from a retention area?
Stewart Gott
Yeah, so, glad you asked that. Something we do that’s a little bit, excuse me, I don’t want to make this a sales pitch at all. So this is something all of your vendors should be doing. Certainly you guys, I’m a firm believer in in doing reference checks and and employment verifications, and all that stuff. But when it comes down to doing reference checks and doing professional reference checks, you really need to figure out what the questions are that these these vendors are asking, when they’re calling, and they’re just saying, you know, hey, is so and so a good guy? Or what, you know, how would you rate them as an employee, and blah, blah, blah, that’s not really getting to the bottom line. Because when people get me think about it, if you’ve ever been called to be a professional reference, you’re gonna sit there and be like, Oh, yeah, I was a great person, Bob, Bob was a great worker, I would give him a 10 out of 10, all that stuff, what you really got to do, and this is what your vendors should be doing. And this is what I’m talking about in terms of going the extra mile is just following up on those questions and asking why? Why did you give that answer? Why was why are you, Why did you rate them at 10 out of 10, when it comes to being a good employee? Tell me about the stuff that they did, and actually providing the the employer with that kind of question. And think about it. A lot of times these people, maybe I’m jaded, because I see this stuff all the time. Maybe these people are just giving their, their their best friend as a professional reference. People can fake it, when it comes to surface surface level stuff. When when I’m if I’m just you know, Chris, If I was your best friend, and you gave me it listed me as a professional reference, and I get a call from a background screening company. They’re just asking me surface level questions. I can probably fake it through that. But then when you if you start asking why, and just kind of digging deeper in going the extra step in terms of really trying to figure out what kind of person this this this prospective employee is, that’s what I’m going to start with showing my true colors that I’m just your best friend, and I’m not your old boss, right? And that kind of stuff. So yeah, that’s, that’s where you can really find vendors and partners that will go the extra mile is on these verification checks, what kind of questions are they asking? And how deep are they going. Um, one thing I also wanted to touch on when it comes to doing finding, finding and retaining good, hiring good, good employees. Um, one thing that that a lot of vendors and people and partners are doing right now is doing these, these checks. And these the application process a lot electronically, when I mean, that is, instead of me as, as an HR person for x company, me sitting there and typing out typing in all of their personal information, their social security number, their name, their date of birth, all that stuff. A lot of what these partners like us are doing is sending these invitations out electronically. So all we need all the only information you give us is the first name, last name and email address. And then we send them an email that says click here and fill out all fill out all your authorizations, your disclosures, your your personal information, schedule your drug test. When I was in staffing, I worked in staffing for six years when I was in staffing, we would send these out. And I would know within two days whether the person was going to back out on me or not. Because I would know whether I would know based on their motivation to get their background check done. Because if they went and filled out this background check stuff immediately, I knew that they were motivated to come to work, they wanted the job. And they had nothing to hide. Whereas if they were taking five days to fill out all the background stuff and and schedule their drug tests, I knew that I kind of had a problem child on my, on my plate of this, I was kind of worried about this guy, he doesn’t seem very motivated to get to work or he’s hiding something. So if I would highly encourage if your partner has that ability to do whether that’s the electronic invite application, I would highly recommend you guys do that. Did I lose you there?
Chris
No, no, no, I got I gotcha. So electronic electronic invites for you know, background screening information.
Stewart Gott
It’s a simple tool that can be used as a motivation checker. I mean, if you’re, if you’re especially if you’re if you’re hiring for high turnover jobs where people come in and they just work they might work for a few days and then get out well this is a good way to check their motivation on the front end and give them something to do give them a job on the front end. This is their first job right there is to all you have to do is fill out your stuff for your background check and drug test.
Chris
Absolutely on a different topic. But but similar I have a good recruiter that I know. They, they always ask a candidate to follow up with you know, two things that they really enjoyed learning about the organization that they’re interviewing with. And they use that for the same reason that you just mentioned about motivation, right? If they send that email response within 24 or 48 hours, they, they, they know that that person is somebody that wants to come work there. And that could take a candidate from being, you know, maybe the second or third best option to the first because merely they want to be there. Right. And they got it done quick.
Stewart Gott
Yeah, it’s like, it’s just a simple little task, where if they, if they get back to you quick, and they get it done quick, you know, you’ve got somebody that’s good.
Chris
Absolutely. Yeah. If you don’t mind, let’s back up a bit to that the reference area. So if when you all do reference checks, are you only doing reference checks on employee a prospective employee provided references? Or are we looking at doing a deeper dive into their background? if requested? How does that work?
Stewart Gott
Yeah. So, you can’t really I mean, we can’t really go check references that they don’t provide us. I mean, I can’t sit here, I can’t go call their old boss, just because I knew they worked there. And they worked in this department, I’m not allowed to go gotcha, old boss. So you can only check the references that they provide you. And then on their past employers, you can only really check the employers that they provide you. I mean, you’re you’re kind of dependent on the information they give you. But, you know, they’re, I guess, applicants and prospective employees aren’t really looking to show an eight month gap on their resume. And so you know, they’re going to try and cover up that gap somehow. And that’s where you find that, okay, well, this guy didn’t work here from June to, to August of 2019. He actually only worked there, June, June and July. And you will figure out what we did down in the nitty gritty of what happened in August. Where were you at August? Where were you working? So yeah, that kind of stuff. But yeah, we as far as reference checks, we can’t, we can’t like go reach out to people that they don’t give us permission to do so.
Chris
I think that’s important to know, because I think there’s a lot of misconceptions from, especially from non HR, right, because if I’m a hiring manager, I don’t know, HR laws, I don’t know, you know, it’s likely that I don’t know all of the hiring, hiring rules and regulations, I guess you could say, right. And so I hope that the folks that are listening today can take something from the conversations we’ve had about..
Stewart Gott
And that’s part of being a good vendor, a good partner is making sure that you stay abreast of all compliance regulations. They change literally every month, you know, one month, it could be one thing, and then the next month, wouldn’t you’re not allowed to run social media screening, like we were just talking, and you’re not allowed to ask him for it. Right. Yeah, I mean, it changes every month. And so good partners will stay on top of that stuff and make sure that they educate their clients on that.
Chris
It’s especially important for companies that are near like state borders, or even even Well, yeah, federal borders even in to a certain extent, right. Because if if you have people crossing state lines to come work for you, you know, what you do, how you potentially look at candidates in one state is totally different than the other correct?
Stewart Gott
Well, yeah, I mean, think about companies that, you know, for instance, senior living facilities, they’ll they’ll have locations all over the entire United States, and they’ve got to stay on top of any particular forms that need to be filled out authorizations and disclosures. And you need to make sure that you’re working with a partner that stays on top of that for you. And that shouldn’t be your job, they should make it easy on you to do so. And that’s where I’m talking about doing the electronic invite stuff, because that stuff can be easily done. Like for instance, in Georgia, we’ve got to have special a special form filled out in order to access the Georgia State records database. And we the only way we can do that really is by doing it electronically, because especially during COVID times more than likely you’re not they’re not coming into the office. And so partnering with a vendor that can that can do that and make sure that they’re big, make sure that they’re keeping you compliant across all the locations that you’re working with.
Chris
So you would say before we before we jump ahead, you would say that it’s that your partner should be coming to you with legal updates regularly monthly likely for the for the areas in which you are doing background screens and letting you know what changes need to take place.
Stewart Gott
1,000% because we we’re held to a very, very high level of compliance. And if you guys if if one of our client’s gets in trouble more than likely, we’re going to get in trouble as well, because we’re reporting something that shouldn’t be reported, or we didn’t have a specific form that needed to be filled out. So we’ve got to make sure that we educate you guys, because you’re the first line of defense. And then then it all it all trickles down from there. So yeah, certainly you need to be partnering with a vendor that absolutely pushes that that that compliance information out to you as it comes comes through. Because that’s it’s impossible for HR people to stay on top of, you know, background check regulations and benefits regulations. There’s all kinds of stuff that you guys have to stay abreast on. So any anything that a partner can do to make sure that you’re you’re a force fed that information is a good thing. As far as I’m concerned.
Chris
Yeah, HR practitioners have such a broad spectrum of information that they have to stay up to date on and it’s crazy. I don’t I don’t think that most organizations realize that one of the reasons that HR is so reactive, unfortunately, to so much of what’s going on in the business is because they’re constantly having to react to the government and political influences. You know, that that that make changes monthly, right and annually. We’re set on my worst enemy having to stay up or stay on top of all that. For sure. So before we wrap today, let’s talk COVID. And it’s, again, like I mentioned earlier, I believe it’s February 3 2021. I don’t know when this episode is going to air. But hopefully vaccines are in full force by by the air date. But you know, there’s a slow progression of that going out currently, but can you share with us what the last year has looked like? What the impact of covid 19 has been on this particular industry and, and what providers are doing, I guess, to to combat the challenges of the last 12 months now,
Stewart Gott
Man, it the what happened to us pretty much happened, everybody else, everything slow down. I mean, in terms of getting checks back and getting information back to our, to our clients, it, it really hit us hard in terms of getting the getting those back in a reasonable time. You got to think that those courthouses that we’re actually sending people to are no longer letting people come in the door, or they’re closed down. And so we had to figure out and get creative to figure out ways to counteract that. You know, that’s, that’s the main effect that it had on us. It just slowed our time service down. And I think that’s across the board from the industry. Everybody I talked to every day is always talking about Ah, Well, my background checks for taking two weeks to get back. Well, what are you running, let’s figure out why. And that’s what that’s what I that’s what I do for a living is really provide consultation around that. But more than likely are not the reason they’re taking extremely long is because of COVID. And people don’t really realize they don’t think about what the effect that that had. And also in terms of drug screening, it’s been tough, because these clinics that you’re sending people to, to provide specimens at say you’re sending a person into a clinic, and they need to get a DOT physical done. Well, anybody who works at this clinic has to have a special certification to do a DOT physical. And so if that person isn’t there that day, then they’re going to have to send the applicant back home and tell them when to come back. And so that just prolongs the process. It’s just it’s been somewhat of a nightmare, but we’re figuring ways to get figuring out ways to get around it. So,
Chris
Stuart, that’s, that’s very interesting. And number one, I know that COVID is affected every industry. And I think it’s important to note that, you know, the challenges that come along with those background checks and making sure that you’re being that you’re letting hiring managers know, right, like, what what the situation is. So HR, if you’re listening today, you know, make sure that you’re you understand that the delays aren’t necessarily because your background check provider is, you know, sitting on their hands, it has a lot to do with government buildings and what’s open and what the access is. And I got to think the more rural the area, the more challenging it is. If we go back to the beginning of our conversation today, so
Stewart Gott
for instance, in Kentucky, I mean, if you look at Kentucky all most all of their courthouses there from a county level perspective are shut down. So we don’t even run county level checks in Kentucky anymore. We’re only going statewide because all the counties report to the state. And so it’s more expensive and it’s costing our clients more money, but it’s better than them having to wait a month to get a background check back. So
Chris
Certainly, Well, I appreciate it. Stuart, it’s been excellent having you on today. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. We, we briefly mentioned in the introduction that you might have a special surprise here at the end for for any listeners that have made it this this entire way. If you don’t mind, tell the folks listening how they can contact you inquire about resources you have for them. And yeah, yeah.
Stewart Gott
So, um, I would, you can reach out to me a myriad of different ways. I mean, I can, I can put my cell phone number on the website if you want me to, but I would prefer to email or LinkedIn invitation, send me a My name is Stuart got S-T-U-A -R-T and last name Gott G-O-T-T was in terms of a special offering. Of course, I’ll provide a free consultation to figure it out. And I’ll dig deep into your current processes and current pricing and all that stuff and figure out are you getting the best bang for your buck? Are you 100% compliant, I mean, that’s my bread and butter is figuring out if a person is compliant, I’ll do all that for free. You don’t have to buy from me, I’ll just make sure that you’re compliant. No problem doing that. I mean, I’m a fc FCRA certified. I’m a subject matter expert. So that’s easy for me. But if I hear from anybody from this podcast, any listeners out there that if you guys are want to want to switch over to data facts, I will give you your first five, five background checks for free. Right now we offer a 10% give back. So 10% of your first month’s invoice goes to the nonprofit of your choosing. I’m willing to double that to any listeners that come to us from from this podcast, I’ll push that out to 20% of your first month’s invoice will go to that gives back program to the nonprofit of you’re choosing. And you also get five five free background checks. So no matter what you’re running, come see me Come talk to me We’ll figure we’ll get you figured out
Chris
awesome Well Stuart is a great guy. If you’re listening in in your you want to know more about background screening and what you can do differently, definitely have a conversation with him. He’s definitely somebody that I think that is a subject matter expert, so inquires to Stuart. He’s definitely active on LinkedIn. And we look forward to to hopefully having you back in the future, Stuart, if there’s any, any updates or changes in the industry that we need to know about, let me know and we’ll have you back on. But until next time, this is the talent tide podcast we appreciate you joining and look forward to hearing from you on social media about what you liked what you didn’t like about the episode, make sure that you follow like and subscribe, depending on where you’re listening Spotify, YouTube, Apple podcast, Google podcast, wherever you listen, subscribe and you can find the talent tide podcast. Thank you for joining. The talent tide podcast is sponsored by endevis. endevis is a full service recruiting firm, offering a broad range of solutions from professional contracting to retained and contingency search to recruitment outsourcing endevis prides itself on its core values of being bold, accountable, help first, passionate, and results driven to ensure the talent we bring to our partners matches their core values and overall mission. For more information, please visit endevis.com that is endevis.com.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Related Podcasts
https://new.endevis.com/podcast-ray-swatzell/
https://new.endevis.com/podcast-joy-johnson-carruthers/
https://new.endevis.com/podcast-christieberger-1/