California Civil Code 1786 prohibits the reporting of any criminal case (Felony or Misdemeanor) 7 years from the date of CONVICTION for all Investigation companies including Credit Reporting agencies.  What does this mean for employers?

BEWARE.

You can go through an employment screening process with a person holding any California address (real or otherwise) and the senario is scary…Murderer or Sex Offender, regardless of how many years in jail, a conviction, Felony or not… and that person is reported as ”No Criminal Record Found” by screening companies when you receive the report.  So the person leaves prison on parole yesterday and his conviction was this day more than 7 years ago and his conviction is washed away from background check reports held by Private Investigation companies.  The penalty for a private investigation company to report the person with a conviction outside of 7 years (regardless of the type of crime) in CA is a minimum of a $10,000 penalty.

Clearly the law is protecting the felons in California at the peril of the citizens of all the other states because this reporting law must be complied with by all Investigation companies regardless of where they are licensed.  For our clients and other employers and business owners, I want you know what you aren’t being told because of new emerging laws, and the risks of hiring a serious criminal at your firm are now more real probable than ever.

What if you knew the person who received a job over you was outright lying on their resume?  But besides that you knew about collaboration of a network of conspirators committing document fraud or practicing collusion to confirm false information of a person competing for your job?

  This week I was approached by a concerned citizen in this very position.  I really am not happy about explaining on a blog how this can happen and how a person may “beat” a general background check so I’ll not explain the particulars of this new sophistication among those committing this type of fraud. 

What I will say is resume fraud is a type of theft without many consequences.  What’s the worst thing which happens?  The offender gets fired from a job [once the fraud is brought to light] they never would have received in the first place?  As our society’s compass of right and wrong erodes, this issue increases.

So a fraud alert from an unfairly affected job applicant was one fraud issue.  You may be affected by this every time you receive a job and just not know about directly.  The second one was a finding of a “front” employer.  The front “employer” has everything to gain by changing an employment start date to show a consultant “employee” has more experience than they really do. 

You may be asking what you can do about this?  Stay tuned for a public profile version of egoCertified with the solution.  Your participation will be the reversal of this trend and the honest applicant will shine above the resume fraud.

Oh that’s just crazy…get rid of candy? Ever hear the crazy idea cancer won’t be cured because of how much money it commands?  Who knows but problems create new markets.  Is there a business person out there waiting in the shadows ready to pounce on the next crisis? 

If you like a western, maybe you loath the bad guy and you root for the good guy, right?  I’m starting to wonder if we are starting to root for the bad guy now in our society.  Or maybe we’ve decided there are no good or bad guys – only grey area “people”.

Well our company profits from the growing distrust and worry of bad (or grey people) lurking in our circles, and I have to stop and re-evaluate.  We want to wear the good hats and save the day, but we need a real solution that changes the trend.  Many years (too many) I wanted a solution to prove I had the credentials I was listing on my resume.  Back then only a few were skeptical of what was listed on a resume because most of us were being pretty honest.  Now, resumes reads like skilled “fiction”.  And for those of you with some higher moral standard to tell the truth, you are washed out like sand on a beach, but I have a solution for you. 

For those of you which want to be part of a solution…be the good “guys” or “gals” and are telling the truth – egoCertified is the way for you to stand out for your honesty.

Cleves Research, a licensed private investigation company, has started a pilot program looking for job seekers out of work.  We are accepting 150 IT, Medical or other professionals for our Pilot program for FREE.  Our objective in this pilot program is to show egoCertified™ reports will assist our participants in getting a job.  We are already underway by receiving participants from AITP Dallas (Association of IT Professionals aitpdallas.org ) and DiRTi (Disaster Incident Response Training Institute dirti.org .)

If you are interested in signing up for egoCertified, email ssutila@cluso.com.

How do we fix this problem for our clients? We eliminate wasteful criminal research based on incorrect identity by cross-checking identity and spelling first, flagging it early and allowing our clients to make corrections before the criminal research begins.  Automated and integrated systems don’t have decision checkpoints to stop a background check until the identity is reconfirmed and corrected, but we do.