Category: Background Checks
Minnesota is now the 23rd state (in addition to Washington D.C. and Guam) to legalize recreational marijuana in some form or another. Minnesota joins a growing list of states taking action on marijuana policy. With nearly half of the states now permitting adult-use of marijuana, what trends and laws should employers consider when revising or adopting drug testing policies? To...
Let’s face it. The hiring process involves mounds of regulations, disclosures, authorizations, and then more disclosures. The last thing an employer – or applicant – wants to see is a higher stack of documents filled with legal jargon. Should employers then consolidate disclosures and authorizations to simplify the hiring process? Not when doing a credit check pursuant to the Fair...
Question: I am an employer in Oregon, and I understand Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a whole slew of bills into law on Monday which will directly impact Oregon employers. What do I need to know?
Question: We recently interviewed an applicant with a very spotty resume; there were repeated gaps in his employment history which were apparent from his resume. He was not hired and called HR to complain that it is illegal for us to consider his unemployment status. Is there a new law on this subject?
Question: We are a private employer in the State of Minnesota and are expanding rapidly. In years past, we have received hundreds, sometimes thousands, of applications for each position advertised. In an effort to increase efficiency in the identification of qualified candidates, as well as in preparation for an anticipated round of hiring in the New Year, we plan to...
Question: We are a Colorado company which manages apartment complexes and use background checks including credit checks as part of our applicant screening. Yesterday, an applicant objected, writing on the application “I do not consent – this is illegal under Colorado law.” Is this a change in the law?
Question: I read with interest your analysis of pre-employment background checks in Quirky Question # 189. I’ve got a slightly different inquiry touching on the same issue. I’m a Human Resources Executive at a national retail company. During several parts of the year, we need to hire additional cashiers. For many years, we have successfully used a temporary staffing agency...
Question: I am the Human Resources Director at a mid-size company, with employees in eight states. We’ve recently read about the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) bringing suit against employers based on pre-employment background checks, as well as some states prohibiting pre-employment credit checks. We certainly don’t want to create potential liability for ourselves based on our pre-employment screening,...
Quirky Question # 98: We hired another company (we’ll call it Company ABC) to provide our firm with contract employees. Company ABC performs background checks on its employee pool, utilizing publicly available sources of information. We typically use a third-party vendor to perform background checks on the employees we hire, but we do not do so for the contract employees...
Quirky Question # 80: We are a bank in Washington and would like to run background checks which include credit checks on all of our applicants. Are there any problems with this across-the-board policy?