Background Checks - The Work Wire

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[00:00:31] Hello everybody.

[00:00:32] This is Bob Goodwin with Career Club joined by my good friend Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., the

[00:00:37] president and CEO of SHRM.

[00:00:38] Johnny, how are you?

[00:00:39] I am doing wonderful.

[00:00:41] This is first quarter.

[00:00:42] Things are good.

[00:00:43] The market's performing.

[00:00:44] Life's good.

[00:00:45] Yeah.

[00:00:46] If you only had more Nvidia stock, right?

[00:00:48] How about that?

[00:00:49] Then there's that, right?

[00:00:50] No, it's so good to see you and thank you as always.

[00:00:54] It's such a pleasure to be with you.

[00:00:55] So, you know, the feedback that we've been doing this for a little bit.

[00:01:00] Here on the work wire and the feedback that I get personally from folks is just really,

[00:01:05] really positive.

[00:01:07] And the opportunity for people to hear from you is very much appreciated.

[00:01:12] So and I always enjoy being with you.

[00:01:14] So thank you.

[00:01:15] I was going to say, wait a minute, I hear from us by the way.

[00:01:18] And it's funny, I talked to someone the other day who mentioned, oh, yeah, I heard

[00:01:22] you on the work wire.

[00:01:23] And I just love the fact that you all don't just always agree.

[00:01:26] I really like it.

[00:01:27] You take on time, you choose and I said, well, hold on, because you're going to see more of it.

[00:01:33] OK, since you just lit the fuse, let's go.

[00:01:37] So today's topic is really interesting.

[00:01:40] You and I were emailing a little bit on this, but it's about background checks.

[00:01:45] Now, I don't know if you knew this, but I was actually with first advantage for a

[00:01:50] hot minute.

[00:01:51] The company?

[00:01:52] Mm hmm.

[00:01:54] Yep. Back in the day, looking after their retail vertical and also their

[00:01:59] nonprofit vertical.

[00:02:01] Got it. OK.

[00:02:02] And so it was really, really interesting to me.

[00:02:07] So I got to learn a lot about that.

[00:02:09] Just the fact that when it's a regulated business, it's protected by the

[00:02:12] Fair Credit Reporting Act, you know, and that companies can't just do

[00:02:17] anything. But anyway, the the nature of background checks

[00:02:22] is on one hand, you know, they clearly serve a purpose.

[00:02:27] Right. You want to protect your customers.

[00:02:29] You want to protect your employees.

[00:02:31] You want to protect your brand.

[00:02:33] There's a lot of safety.

[00:02:35] I mean, there's just so many good reasons to just make sure that, you

[00:02:40] know, we know who's coming onto the payroll and represent our brand and doing

[00:02:45] the work of our business.

[00:02:47] Having said that, there's also some things that at least in the evolving

[00:02:53] talent market workplace, you know, our background checks kind of keeping up

[00:02:59] with an evolving talent pool.

[00:03:02] And then I want to weave in some DEI, IED kinds of issues into this.

[00:03:10] So that's our topic.

[00:03:12] We'd love to just start to get some top of mind thoughts from you,

[00:03:16] Johnny. So we think about background checks.

[00:03:18] So let me just give you context of let me start with I have a bias toward

[00:03:25] background checks and others can agree or disagree.

[00:03:29] And I understand all of the downsides, but no no topic is clean.

[00:03:34] Right. It was easy.

[00:03:36] We wouldn't need to do this.

[00:03:37] We'd be talking about it on the work.

[00:03:38] Right. But I we owned for a while a company and a portfolio of

[00:03:45] companies. I don't mean me, the company that I worked with and I was the head of

[00:03:48] H.R. We hired a guy who'd been convicted of rape.

[00:03:54] We did not do background checks.

[00:03:57] He happened to be African-American, not that our African-Americans are

[00:04:00] rapists or whatever. You get my point, but happened to be

[00:04:03] African-American. Good guy.

[00:04:05] But all you know, we wouldn't have hired him if we thought he was a bad

[00:04:09] guy, actually a good performer, etc.

[00:04:12] We ran a 24 hour call center,

[00:04:18] which was predominantly female

[00:04:22] within a predominantly female population.

[00:04:25] One particular night, one or two people on the very, very late night shift,

[00:04:31] two women there alone.

[00:04:32] One walks into down the stairwell to go get some coffee from another floor.

[00:04:37] And guess what? She runs into him and he rapes her.

[00:04:40] And then we learned that had we simply conducted a background check,

[00:04:47] we would have known not only had he committed this crime before,

[00:04:51] but we would have learned that he was a registered sex offender.

[00:04:55] We put our employee at risk.

[00:04:58] Put aside what the settlement, the lawsuit cost us.

[00:05:02] It was the wrong thing for us to do.

[00:05:06] We could have still hired the guy because everyone needs to be able to work.

[00:05:11] You know how I feel on second chances.

[00:05:13] People have to find a way to provide for themselves and their families.

[00:05:17] But maybe we would have put in place certain precautions.

[00:05:20] Maybe we would have said he can only work when, you know,

[00:05:24] there are X number of people in the building.

[00:05:26] Perhaps we would have allowed him to work remotely because it was a call

[00:05:29] center after all.

[00:05:30] There are so many things we would have done had we known

[00:05:34] to look back and realize that we put those women's lives at risk

[00:05:39] when we could have done something to protect them,

[00:05:42] informs the way I think about background checks.

[00:05:45] You know, I have a 13 year old daughter, I have two sisters, a mom.

[00:05:49] Like it bothered me and still bothers me.

[00:05:51] So a little serious to start, right?

[00:05:55] But this is a serious matter.

[00:05:57] Exactly. Yes, employers have a right to redo everything

[00:06:03] we reasonably can to provide you a safe workplace.

[00:06:06] And part of that, to me, doing your due diligence is to conduct background

[00:06:10] checks. Now we have to make sure that we're not just excluding people

[00:06:14] just because they've made a mistake in their lives and we can narrowly

[00:06:18] tailor the hiring decision so that if you wrote a bad check or you did

[00:06:23] something that was, yes, violative of the law, but not enough

[00:06:26] to put other people's lives at risk. Got it.

[00:06:29] We cannot. I'm a huge proponent of

[00:06:32] anything that prohibits background checks just generally.

[00:06:36] And there are certain crimes that I think we need to be able to go back

[00:06:39] for much further than the seven or ten years that some states cap it at,

[00:06:43] because I want to know if I have someone in my workplace

[00:06:47] who has a who's predisposed to put people really at risk.

[00:06:53] So I don't even get to customers.

[00:06:54] I don't even care about the company's reputation.

[00:06:57] Fundamentally, we in HR have an obligation to protect people

[00:07:01] where we can when we bring them into our workplace.

[00:07:04] So now, yeah, no.

[00:07:05] So I mean, yes, I mean, safety, physical

[00:07:10] safety is, you know, got to be like somewhere at the most basic level.

[00:07:15] Right. I think work and be safe.

[00:07:18] So you bring up a few things, though.

[00:07:20] One is there's various kinds of offenses.

[00:07:25] That's right. Right.

[00:07:26] Then we should probably just unpack that by itself.

[00:07:29] And then the second bit of it, and you just alluded to it,

[00:07:33] is how far back can I go? How far back should I go?

[00:07:36] And then how do those is our matrix between sort of those two things,

[00:07:39] the seriousness of the offense and how far back we should be looking.

[00:07:46] I mean, I'll maybe kick this off a little.

[00:07:49] Please, please. Is.

[00:07:52] I'm very much a second chance person, too.

[00:07:55] And I've probably just in full

[00:07:58] transparency, probably evolved over time in that one.

[00:08:01] Oh, me too, because I'm a law and order guy.

[00:08:03] You know, I would have my history was not always bring.

[00:08:06] It's like if you committed a crime, you should pay forever.

[00:08:09] I used to be there. I'm not any longer.

[00:08:11] And I have definitely moderated on that.

[00:08:15] Like, like if we want a better society, if we want lives to be changed,

[00:08:19] we have to provide the opportunity for lives to be changed.

[00:08:24] And so if this is like just a black mark on your record, it's binary in out.

[00:08:30] Sorry, you just opted out forever.

[00:08:32] Then how could you ever possibly you've told them

[00:08:36] there is no other alternative, there is no other avenue for you to go pursue.

[00:08:41] So you're going to go back to what works.

[00:08:44] And so so that that to me is just fundamental.

[00:08:49] And I think I'm probably catching up society in this regard.

[00:08:53] Like, you know, we just need to be more forgiving.

[00:08:57] Yes. You talk a lot about Johnny, about being an empath.

[00:09:00] And, you know, and I think one of the reasons we get on well

[00:09:04] is we're both wired that way.

[00:09:06] But but it's like it's it's the right thing to do.

[00:09:10] It's I think the smart thing to do.

[00:09:15] And, you know, if you think about

[00:09:19] somebody who has been incarcerated

[00:09:22] and depending on what their background is, like where they grew up.

[00:09:26] So I'm just going to be super stereotypical for a second.

[00:09:29] Say the south side of Chicago, which has a reputation

[00:09:32] for not being the easiest place to grow up.

[00:09:36] Well, if somebody gets in trouble there, serves time,

[00:09:41] and then they are blacklisted essentially from working again.

[00:09:45] Right. Because background checks and it's just it is what it is.

[00:09:49] Well, not only said individual not get better,

[00:09:54] his or her family doesn't get better.

[00:09:57] And then by extension, the community doesn't get better.

[00:10:00] The communities are just the accumulation of individual lives

[00:10:04] and family units, however that family unit is constructed.

[00:10:08] So when somebody is given the opportunity

[00:10:12] to pivot and change the arc of their life,

[00:10:17] it's not just them, it's their family unit.

[00:10:20] And then by extension, the community becomes different.

[00:10:24] Look at what Bob Bob used to be in trouble.

[00:10:27] Bob used to be a gangbanger. Bob used to be whatever.

[00:10:30] Look now he's now working at this company.

[00:10:32] He's providing for his family and like they're

[00:10:37] just a completely different life path.

[00:10:40] Like who could possibly be against that

[00:10:43] except companies perceive risk?

[00:10:46] And they're like, all I know is I think I know

[00:10:50] an employer might say is if if I don't hire people

[00:10:56] who already have a checkered pass, therefore perceived higher

[00:11:00] risk profile, why would I increase my risk profile if I don't have to?

[00:11:05] Bob, can I let me just get on that.

[00:11:07] Our data at SHRM showed something that really shocked me.

[00:11:12] I could not believe it.

[00:11:14] More employers are willing to hire people

[00:11:19] who have committed or been committed crimes in the past

[00:11:23] than our employees.

[00:11:26] Say that again, say that again.

[00:11:27] Oh, you have companies where our data says the HR

[00:11:33] leader, the CEO says this give people second chances.

[00:11:37] The person sitting next to that person says,

[00:11:40] I get it, but I would just as soon not have my wife

[00:11:44] sitting next to an ex con in the workplace.

[00:11:47] So the biggest pushback is, you know, that concept of NIMBY,

[00:11:51] not in my backyard, like everyone wants you to be there,

[00:11:55] but oh, not the word next to me.

[00:11:57] Believe it or not, workwire audience, the biggest

[00:12:01] pushback is with people.

[00:12:03] So it's a great concept.

[00:12:04] Second chances until the person sitting next to you

[00:12:08] has just gotten out of prison for bank robbery.

[00:12:13] You're like, oh, well not that like, OK, speak driving too fast.

[00:12:17] Maybe but there are categories and I know we're going to talk

[00:12:21] about it where the people like, I don't want that person.

[00:12:24] So it is the biggest hurdle I have found.

[00:12:28] It used to be employers didn't want to do it from a pure

[00:12:30] risk profile standpoint.

[00:12:32] Increasingly, it is employees don't want to because

[00:12:38] of their fears.

[00:12:40] You don't have to do anything right now.

[00:12:42] You open any newspaper in any major city right now.

[00:12:45] Crime is the topic, the biggest topic being discussed.

[00:12:49] People are afraid.

[00:12:50] So once I decide that I'm afraid of crime, I'm sure is

[00:12:53] heck not interested in you bringing people into my

[00:12:55] workplace who are from the criminal justice system.

[00:12:59] So OK, so let's unpack that a little bit.

[00:13:01] And this was actually for anybody listening to this was

[00:13:05] way deep in the origin story of the work wire.

[00:13:08] Yes, right.

[00:13:09] You had brought to me somebody that was in Michigan, I believe,

[00:13:13] and had gotten their law degree while in prison and wanted

[00:13:17] to clerk for a judge.

[00:13:18] And the judge said, OK, that's cool.

[00:13:22] But the other people, the other judges were like,

[00:13:25] ah, it's kind of to your point.

[00:13:29] You're going to taint the purity of what we do by

[00:13:34] introducing this convict into our midst.

[00:13:39] Yep.

[00:13:40] It's not as simple as we think it is, right?

[00:13:43] But but what struck me about this and I had a very

[00:13:45] strong reaction like that's the dumbest thing I ever

[00:13:49] heard. And then you go, yeah, Bob, but what if this

[00:13:52] guy was a sex offender?

[00:13:54] Right.

[00:13:55] You still think that up?

[00:13:56] And then how long ago was it and what rehabilitation has

[00:14:01] this person been through?

[00:14:02] So the guy that did bank robbery yesterday and sitting

[00:14:04] next to me today, probably not a fan of that idea.

[00:14:07] Right.

[00:14:07] But but it it raises a really interesting point.

[00:14:11] One, I don't think that there's a definitive formula

[00:14:14] for anything like that.

[00:14:15] But but you know, I appreciate the sherm data.

[00:14:18] This is OK because of fear.

[00:14:21] How can we educate people or at least create some

[00:14:26] I'm probably getting used to the wrong word, Johnny,

[00:14:28] boundaries. It's something that that provides them

[00:14:32] with that feeling of safety.

[00:14:34] Right.

[00:14:35] Well, at the same time, providing opportunity,

[00:14:38] diversifying the workforce, et cetera.

[00:14:41] It's complicated as as like most of these issues.

[00:14:46] They are really complicated.

[00:14:47] But I will tell you, at the end of the day, we have

[00:14:51] to from a risk standpoint, we've got to protect.

[00:14:54] I'm going to go back to where I say you got to protect

[00:14:55] the workplace.

[00:14:56] But I have to balance that, as you pointed out,

[00:14:59] about opportunities for people.

[00:15:01] Grace and mercy is a is a phrase, words that you

[00:15:04] and I absolutely embrace.

[00:15:06] And I think most people do.

[00:15:08] Your points will take them.

[00:15:09] We've got to educate people.

[00:15:10] I found that once you have, you know, if you ask me,

[00:15:14] I've got two candidates, one who has a background,

[00:15:17] criminal background, one who doesn't, which one would

[00:15:19] I hire, assuming all things equal, the person

[00:15:22] without the background.

[00:15:24] Right.

[00:15:24] I mean, I get it.

[00:15:25] But if you educate me, if I got to know that person,

[00:15:28] if I if I understood the circumstances around

[00:15:31] which how long ago to your point, what was the nature

[00:15:33] of the crime, et cetera, maybe I'd feel differently.

[00:15:36] But let me just challenge you.

[00:15:38] There are some crimes.

[00:15:39] It's easy and the difficulty in saying, let's pick

[00:15:43] the class of crimes because, well, I could hire someone

[00:15:47] who wasn't engaged in a crime against a person.

[00:15:50] Right.

[00:15:51] Physical crimes scare you.

[00:15:54] But if Madoff was still alive, who would want to work

[00:15:56] next to him?

[00:15:59] OK, purely didn't take anyone's life directly, et cetera.

[00:16:03] It was a financial crime.

[00:16:05] But who in the work where our audience would say,

[00:16:08] oh, I'd be cheering for Madoff to have a second chance

[00:16:10] had he lived and gotten out of prison.

[00:16:12] The answers very, very few of us.

[00:16:14] Right.

[00:16:14] Very few.

[00:16:15] And that was a purely crime, financial crime.

[00:16:19] So I just it's not as easy.

[00:16:21] And I've lived in this HR world for a long time.

[00:16:24] Every time we've tried to establish the boundaries

[00:16:28] and lead with empathy, our own biases

[00:16:31] get pushed to the edge.

[00:16:34] Right.

[00:16:34] Do I want to hire someone who wrote bad checks or embezzled

[00:16:38] from their last company?

[00:16:40] Maybe as long as it's not in finance, if it's not in HR.

[00:16:44] Because you have too much access

[00:16:45] to confidential information.

[00:16:47] Right.

[00:16:47] So my issue is not that you committed a crime.

[00:16:50] It's that I question if you are trustworthy.

[00:16:55] Challenge me on this one, Johnny.

[00:16:57] Because where my mind goes in all of this

[00:16:59] is I would not want the argument to stop

[00:17:05] unless you can answer the edgiest of all edge cases.

[00:17:09] Right.

[00:17:10] So Bernie Madoff is fairly singular in American crime.

[00:17:16] Rape, murder.

[00:17:18] But if we just looked at the total distribution of people

[00:17:21] that have at some point in their lives

[00:17:24] been part of the incarceration system,

[00:17:28] the vast majority of those people,

[00:17:31] it's going to be drug crimes and things like that.

[00:17:35] Right.

[00:17:36] And how long ago was it?

[00:17:38] So we can address a really big chunk of the problem

[00:17:42] without having to have the perfect answer that

[00:17:45] doesn't exist for every other potential edge case that's

[00:17:49] out there.

[00:17:50] So I would be an advocate of just being, at some level,

[00:17:53] pragmatic and say, well, let's do the parts that we can do

[00:17:57] and work on the parts that still require more thinking

[00:18:00] without having to figure the whole ball of wax

[00:18:02] out first to be able to do good.

[00:18:05] But that's what's happening in HR practices

[00:18:07] around the country and indeed around the globe

[00:18:09] is the right answer is to do a case by case review.

[00:18:14] And there are all sorts of circumstances,

[00:18:17] even with some pretty heinous crimes.

[00:18:20] People who, as I said, committed sexual assault.

[00:18:23] One could easily argue, well, I don't care how long ago it

[00:18:26] occurred and I don't care about the circumstances

[00:18:29] that person should not be in the workplace.

[00:18:30] And I'm suggesting to you, as I did at the outset,

[00:18:33] that maybe there's a different way to allow them to work

[00:18:35] and they just don't work under conditions where

[00:18:38] they could put people at risk.

[00:18:39] Maybe it's a fully remote employee, et cetera.

[00:18:41] So I think it's a case by case analysis.

[00:18:44] That is how most of us in the HR world practice now

[00:18:47] is to take a little bit more time

[00:18:50] to analyze it, to know all of the circumstances

[00:18:52] because even when it appears clean,

[00:18:55] it may not be clean.

[00:18:56] What if you were a home health aide

[00:18:59] who actually stole from a 90 year old person

[00:19:02] and maybe you're only stealing $500 a month

[00:19:05] from their pension?

[00:19:06] That's still a really bad crime.

[00:19:08] And that's not exactly the person

[00:19:10] I want working next to me.

[00:19:11] You know what I mean?

[00:19:12] So we look at the circumstances on an individualized basis.

[00:19:17] That's the way to do this.

[00:19:19] And therefore, to go all the way back

[00:19:21] to what we started with,

[00:19:23] I do believe in background checks.

[00:19:25] I think that not knowing that that person

[00:19:31] committed what appears to be not a big crime,

[00:19:34] $500 a month, $6,000 from a 90 year old person

[00:19:38] who had dementia was,

[00:19:40] you could justify anything and say,

[00:19:42] so why do we need to know that?

[00:19:44] Because you do.

[00:19:45] And I think that's where I land is

[00:19:47] get the background check, get the information

[00:19:49] and strong HR professionals will look at it

[00:19:53] and working with the hiring manager

[00:19:55] determine how to hire the person,

[00:19:57] not just blanket decide not to hire them.

[00:20:00] Okay, let's pick up a couple other elements

[00:20:03] of background checks.

[00:20:04] One is an education checks.

[00:20:06] So Bob says he's got an MBA from Harvard.

[00:20:10] He actually doesn't.

[00:20:11] In your HR career, did you ever have somebody

[00:20:13] that misrepresented their education credentials?

[00:20:16] All of the time.

[00:20:17] And I don't, and I remember actually

[00:20:20] having this conversation with someone

[00:20:21] I had to fire from my own team

[00:20:23] who lied about their credentials.

[00:20:25] I said, this isn't about you not having a degree.

[00:20:27] I actually would have hired you without the degree

[00:20:29] because personally, I don't care if you have a degree

[00:20:30] or not, I'm going to fire you

[00:20:33] because I can't trust you.

[00:20:34] You lied about something that was of absolute,

[00:20:37] there was no significance to it.

[00:20:38] It was a silly lie.

[00:20:40] And so I can't trust you in HR.

[00:20:43] So yes.

[00:20:46] So I think you just answered the question.

[00:20:49] If you had your chief marketing officer

[00:20:52] was amazing doing great job

[00:20:54] and somewhere you found out that

[00:20:56] you actually didn't have that degree.

[00:21:01] Doing a good job, been there for five years,

[00:21:04] you would fire that person?

[00:21:06] I would.

[00:21:07] Now, I can't say anything blanket, right?

[00:21:09] Back to the case by case analysis.

[00:21:12] I know some of you all thought you got me,

[00:21:14] but really I'm like, no, no,

[00:21:16] I would look at it,

[00:21:17] but probably particularly as a leader.

[00:21:20] And remember the values of our organization

[00:21:22] fundamental to everything is that

[00:21:23] we need to be able to trust you.

[00:21:25] And this would make me question

[00:21:28] everything that you do and say.

[00:21:29] Now that doesn't mean,

[00:21:31] and this is where the second chances comes in,

[00:21:34] that the person should forever be barred

[00:21:36] from working for any other company

[00:21:37] and any other organization in the world.

[00:21:39] They should learn that I have lost the trust

[00:21:42] of Johnny and Sherm,

[00:21:43] but that doesn't mean that Johnny and Sherm

[00:21:46] should prevent you from getting a job

[00:21:48] anywhere else for the rest of your world

[00:21:50] because you told that one lie.

[00:21:51] Just tell the truth going forward.

[00:21:55] Do you have a point of view

[00:21:56] on continuous background checks?

[00:21:58] So like we did it at the beginning of employment,

[00:22:01] but you know what?

[00:22:02] I think we have to do every other year

[00:22:04] some kind of a,

[00:22:05] just make sure nothing's changed

[00:22:07] since our relationship began.

[00:22:09] So I know someone are gonna like this,

[00:22:11] but I absolutely do.

[00:22:12] I think it is just like random drug testing.

[00:22:16] I mean, I absolutely believe that it's good hygiene.

[00:22:21] What if during the interim,

[00:22:23] you were convicted of a crime,

[00:22:25] but because the jails were filled

[00:22:27] or some set of circumstances,

[00:22:30] you're convicted,

[00:22:30] but you're not incarcerated.

[00:22:33] Because you're only incarcerated on the weekends,

[00:22:35] which happens a lot,

[00:22:36] especially in financial crimes

[00:22:37] when there are no crimes against the person.

[00:22:39] So Monday through Friday,

[00:22:41] you could be working in my finance department,

[00:22:43] a convicted felon for embezzling at your last job,

[00:22:46] but they didn't convict you until after I hired you.

[00:22:49] So you were fired,

[00:22:50] you were tried all of this while you're working for me.

[00:22:54] And I don't know.

[00:22:56] So I am a huge advocate of maybe call it random,

[00:23:00] maybe you call it periodic,

[00:23:02] whatever you wanna do,

[00:23:03] but checking in to ensure that the person

[00:23:06] who works with you is in fact,

[00:23:08] the person you think is working with you

[00:23:10] and has not made some really bad decisions

[00:23:13] that could impact the safety of your employees

[00:23:15] or the risk profile of your company.

[00:23:18] I'm okay with that.

[00:23:19] But again, you can't just blanket say,

[00:23:21] and if we do a background check

[00:23:23] and learn that you have been involved

[00:23:25] with the criminal justice system since we hired you,

[00:23:27] we're automatically gonna fire you.

[00:23:29] That is not something I agree with.

[00:23:31] Got it.

[00:23:31] And then where does,

[00:23:33] I generally don't know this,

[00:23:34] where does doing like social media

[00:23:37] and like following you on social media

[00:23:39] and oh, by the way,

[00:23:40] I find out that you're a white supremacist

[00:23:42] or you've got some other less than desirable quality.

[00:23:47] Is that one, is that legal?

[00:23:49] And then two, is it practical?

[00:23:51] Well, it's a lot legal,

[00:23:53] especially if you put it out there, right?

[00:23:55] So people forget that social media

[00:23:57] is you've essentially,

[00:23:59] I might not go looking for it,

[00:24:01] it comes to me.

[00:24:02] And what we've seen,

[00:24:03] you wanna talk about white supremacists,

[00:24:05] well, we've seen people

[00:24:07] who've made some fairly antisemitic comments

[00:24:11] as of late.

[00:24:12] And one of the big law firms withdrew the offer

[00:24:15] of a young African-American woman from NYU,

[00:24:19] I believe it was law school just earlier last year

[00:24:23] after October 7th,

[00:24:24] where she went on social media

[00:24:26] and literally made some really, really outrageous statements

[00:24:30] against the Jewish people.

[00:24:32] She should have,

[00:24:33] that job should have been rescinded, period.

[00:24:35] And that was, we realized it

[00:24:38] because that law firm was doing its own form

[00:24:42] of social media background check.

[00:24:44] And people don't know this,

[00:24:45] but roughly we've heard somewhere

[00:24:47] between 70 and 80% of the Fortune 500 companies

[00:24:51] regularly conduct background checks.

[00:24:54] And this is one, not just at time of hire,

[00:24:57] but during the process.

[00:24:59] And someone, I've had people challenge me,

[00:25:01] Johnny, that's horrible.

[00:25:02] Well, let me say something.

[00:25:03] What if Johnny Taylor,

[00:25:05] the CEO of Shurm went online,

[00:25:08] call it Facebook,

[00:25:09] and by the way, I'm not on social media,

[00:25:10] but if I were,

[00:25:11] and I went onto a social media,

[00:25:13] and I decided to trash women.

[00:25:19] My board should call me on that

[00:25:21] and I could argue,

[00:25:22] oh, I was doing it on my own time.

[00:25:23] No, no, no, no.

[00:25:24] You're affecting the reputation of our profession

[00:25:27] and of our organization,

[00:25:28] and we're not gonna pay you

[00:25:29] and allow you to do it.

[00:25:30] Oh, but you didn't get my permission

[00:25:31] to do a background check.

[00:25:32] No, you put it out on blast.

[00:25:34] You put it on public, social media.

[00:25:36] So I remind especially the younger generation

[00:25:39] that you now have a permanent record

[00:25:42] that anyone can go find and review

[00:25:46] and make employment decisions.

[00:25:48] And so yes, it's legal,

[00:25:51] and it's actually one of the most dangerous areas

[00:25:54] for employees.

[00:25:55] As you think social media

[00:25:57] is not background checkable,

[00:25:59] you're wrong.

[00:26:00] We do it all the time.

[00:26:01] Sometimes we won't tell you,

[00:26:03] we'll just do it

[00:26:04] and exclude you from hiring.

[00:26:05] Let's talk about rank and file employees though.

[00:26:07] I'm a software engineer buried deep in the bowels

[00:26:09] of some company coding, whatever.

[00:26:13] I'm not damaging the reputation

[00:26:15] of XYZ company per se,

[00:26:17] because I'm not a high profile employee

[00:26:19] of the company or in public spotlight,

[00:26:21] but I'm off doing misogynistic things

[00:26:24] or racist things or whatever the thing is.

[00:26:30] Should that person be called to account on that?

[00:26:34] Yes.

[00:26:35] Yeah?

[00:26:36] And I feel very strongly about it

[00:26:38] because you're low level,

[00:26:41] low deep down into the organization

[00:26:43] until you're not, until it hits the bottom.

[00:26:46] Right?

[00:26:46] And then I get dragged with you.

[00:26:48] Think about, and this woman by title was the vice president.

[00:26:51] Remember the woman who became the Karen, right?

[00:26:55] She's that walking her dog.

[00:26:56] And I hate that term by the way,

[00:26:57] but that's what we began to know her as,

[00:26:59] walking her dog.

[00:27:00] She gets into interaction with the black guy

[00:27:02] in the middle of central park.

[00:27:03] And all of a sudden she loses her job.

[00:27:05] With, and she lost her job

[00:27:06] before a criminal charge was filed.

[00:27:08] So even if they had done a background check,

[00:27:10] it wouldn't have shown up.

[00:27:11] She was on her own time, et cetera.

[00:27:14] But guess what?

[00:27:16] The company, because she showed up on social media

[00:27:20] and in the mainstream media,

[00:27:21] decided that we don't want that.

[00:27:23] And this was not, night was standing.

[00:27:25] I think she may have had a vice president title,

[00:27:28] but everybody had a vice president title

[00:27:30] in our organization.

[00:27:31] She wasn't, you know, a direct report to the CEO

[00:27:34] or the CEO or anything, but they got rid of her.

[00:27:37] So you are always,

[00:27:39] no matter where you are within an organization,

[00:27:41] if you engage in behavior.

[00:27:42] So I'm gonna say this real quick,

[00:27:44] because I was tickled.

[00:27:45] Someone challenged me on it.

[00:27:46] And I said, well, what if you found out one of,

[00:27:49] call it the technologist to use your example,

[00:27:52] low level coder within IBM

[00:27:56] was on the dark web,

[00:27:58] spouting all sorts of negative things

[00:28:01] about African-Americans post George Floyd,

[00:28:04] the month after that.

[00:28:05] You'd be okay with that company.

[00:28:07] No, you wouldn't stop it.

[00:28:09] Stop it.

[00:28:10] You know what I mean?

[00:28:11] And then you say,

[00:28:12] that's not the person who holds up our values,

[00:28:15] as a company.

[00:28:17] That's not the type of person we hire

[00:28:18] and you'd be gone.

[00:28:19] So I don't think it's titled.

[00:28:21] Now obviously the more senior and public your role is,

[00:28:25] the even more sensitive you have to be.

[00:28:28] But wherever you are in the organization,

[00:28:29] if you don't live and uphold organizations values,

[00:28:32] then you shouldn't work there.

[00:28:33] Okay, I'm gonna channel Johnny Taylor for a minute.

[00:28:36] Is on the one side freedom of speech.

[00:28:39] You wanna go do that?

[00:28:41] And it's not illegal?

[00:28:43] Go for it.

[00:28:44] Employment at will,

[00:28:45] but you wanna work here?

[00:28:47] No.

[00:28:52] But that decision has consequences

[00:28:54] and you should be open to absorbing the consequences.

[00:28:58] If you wanna go rant and be a weirdo

[00:29:01] and say whatever you wanna say,

[00:29:02] okay, first amendment right, have at it.

[00:29:07] But that doesn't mean that we have to employ you.

[00:29:11] And it's kind of that simple.

[00:29:12] Decisions have consequences, right?

[00:29:14] Yes.

[00:29:15] And I'm glad you said that

[00:29:16] because that is the dilemma.

[00:29:17] I remind people all other time,

[00:29:19] yes, you have a right and the company has rights.

[00:29:22] And so we're gonna exercise it

[00:29:24] but back to background checks.

[00:29:25] I'm glad you pointed out

[00:29:26] their financial background checks,

[00:29:27] which is one area that I just in closing wanna say

[00:29:30] I'm very sensitive to.

[00:29:31] We talk about criminal background checks.

[00:29:33] We talk about social media checks and all of that.

[00:29:36] There was a period when a lot of companies

[00:29:38] and there still are some who do credit checks

[00:29:42] as a form of background check.

[00:29:43] And what we know is the data has suggested

[00:29:47] that that disproportionately impacts female employees,

[00:29:50] women because so many of them at least historically

[00:29:54] and the math is changing,

[00:29:56] where say at home mom's guy meets a younger woman

[00:29:59] leaves you your credits destroyed.

[00:30:02] And so you should not be foreclosed

[00:30:04] from getting job opportunities

[00:30:06] at the very moment that you need to get a job

[00:30:07] to provide for your family

[00:30:09] because your husband was the breadwinner

[00:30:12] and you were a homemaker and now your credit is destroyed.

[00:30:16] So we're very, very careful.

[00:30:18] I am not a big proponent of background checks

[00:30:23] on credit background checks.

[00:30:25] I'm just not.

[00:30:27] That doesn't mean I'm right.

[00:30:28] It means that-

[00:30:29] Yeah, I mean, the theory is

[00:30:31] is that if your finances aren't in good shape

[00:30:34] you're potentially a theft slash embezzlement risk

[00:30:38] to shore up your lacking financial situation.

[00:30:42] Last question though on background checks

[00:30:44] is what natural to drug laws

[00:30:47] are changing in the United States pretty quickly.

[00:30:50] They're liberalizing marijuana, obviously.

[00:30:54] When I was at first advantage

[00:30:56] this drug panel was very common

[00:31:00] and marijuana was definitely part of the drug panel.

[00:31:05] Well, it's not legal on my state yet

[00:31:08] but I kind of acknowledge this is the reality

[00:31:11] and the train's left the station.

[00:31:13] It's just a matter of time till it gets to me.

[00:31:18] How would you have employers think about drug testing?

[00:31:24] Tough one because frankly anything that alters your mood

[00:31:28] if it's alcohol abuse, drug abuse,

[00:31:32] prescription drug abuse, right?

[00:31:34] Any of those things are probably not good for business.

[00:31:37] So the general rule around that is,

[00:31:40] and we can't forget marijuana is still not legal

[00:31:44] under federal law.

[00:31:45] Correct.

[00:31:45] So no matter what your state says

[00:31:48] you still have that as an issue

[00:31:50] that people, someone I know

[00:31:54] thought they could just walk into the airport

[00:31:55] and like you do know that that's federal grounds

[00:31:58] even though it sits in your state

[00:32:00] and you can be arrested for bringing marijuana

[00:32:02] onto an airport ground.

[00:32:04] So anyway, I think that personally

[00:32:08] and professionally my opinion is that

[00:32:11] where it is necessary if you're using a vehicle at work

[00:32:15] if you are using major machinery

[00:32:17] that could cause death to yourself or injury to others.

[00:32:20] So I think there are some circumstances

[00:32:23] where it is totally appropriate

[00:32:25] and these are not small.

[00:32:27] Like if I don't want my physician,

[00:32:28] I want my physician and my nurse to be drug tested.

[00:32:31] I do, just fact because I do

[00:32:34] for the reasons that all of us want to.

[00:32:36] So to a blanket everyone is drug tested

[00:32:39] is probably not a good idea

[00:32:40] but a blanket no one is drug tested

[00:32:42] because even if it's legal in your state

[00:32:45] or your jurisdiction

[00:32:46] that doesn't mean certain roles require

[00:32:49] an enhanced level of safety.

[00:32:52] And that's why I would use background testing.

[00:32:54] Which is also to your earlier point

[00:32:56] on random drug testing.

[00:32:58] Right.

[00:32:58] So I know how to prep for the test

[00:32:59] and do whatever and game the system.

[00:33:03] But so on some random Tuesday afternoon,

[00:33:06] it's like Bob, can you come over here for a minute?

[00:33:09] It's like, oh crap, I wasn't planning on this.

[00:33:12] Right.

[00:33:13] So I think that back to baseline safety

[00:33:16] for the individual people that they're around

[00:33:19] their customers, like I don't know

[00:33:22] how you could be against that.

[00:33:23] Last thing, and this is actually

[00:33:26] how our conversation got started.

[00:33:28] Yeah.

[00:33:29] We've been talking about kind of all the official channels

[00:33:32] for doing background check.

[00:33:35] But there's the whole back channel things

[00:33:39] and that can work in both directions, right?

[00:33:42] So as a career coach,

[00:33:45] like if somebody was going to be interviewing

[00:33:47] with Johnny Taylor, I would be telling him,

[00:33:49] well first of all they could call me

[00:33:50] as they about tell me what Johnny's like,

[00:33:52] he's great, you're gonna love him, whatever.

[00:33:54] You know, go check you out on social media

[00:33:56] and do all these things.

[00:33:57] And I'd be like, you're an idiot to not prepare

[00:34:00] and do your due diligence on the hiring manager,

[00:34:03] the executive team, whatever.

[00:34:05] But like, yeah, you should be doing your due diligence.

[00:34:09] On the flip side, and this is where it got contentious

[00:34:11] on a LinkedIn post the other week was,

[00:34:14] is it cool if the hiring manager

[00:34:18] sees that Johnny's connected to Brenda

[00:34:20] and he calls and I'm gonna hire Brenda.

[00:34:23] Hey Johnny, tell me about Brenda.

[00:34:24] Like good egg, should I hire her?

[00:34:26] Anything I need to know about?

[00:34:28] And that kind of lit a firestorm.

[00:34:31] I saw.

[00:34:34] To me, it's reality.

[00:34:37] It's like, why are we doing these official background

[00:34:40] checks because we're trying to get some sense

[00:34:42] for who is this person

[00:34:44] that we're bringing in the organization.

[00:34:46] People hire people, you know this person.

[00:34:49] I don't know this person as well.

[00:34:50] What can you tell me?

[00:34:52] That to me is just like massively

[00:34:56] obvious, but not everybody would necessarily see it that way.

[00:35:01] Well and listen, I get it.

[00:35:02] All of us have enemies.

[00:35:04] All of us have haters.

[00:35:06] People who you've not done anything to in the world

[00:35:08] who would just as soon hurt your job chances

[00:35:11] or whatever just because they're unhappy

[00:35:13] in their own lives, whatever, right?

[00:35:15] Envy, jealousy, whatever.

[00:35:16] So it is employers who view it and we do it a lot.

[00:35:21] We do it in part because if I call 99% of the people

[00:35:26] in the companies in America to do a background check,

[00:35:28] they're gonna give you what we call

[00:35:30] name, rank and serial number.

[00:35:31] Is the person eligible for hire or not?

[00:35:34] That's all.

[00:35:35] We will not give any context.

[00:35:36] The person could have fought their boss

[00:35:39] in the middle of the lunchroom.

[00:35:42] I mean, we've seen this, right?

[00:35:44] But if I talk to, you know, Neymar, Mary,

[00:35:48] who was at the company at the time

[00:35:49] who witnessed the fight, she will tell me

[00:35:52] what happened, right?

[00:35:53] And so almost out of necessity,

[00:35:56] employers are relying heavily on these sorts

[00:35:59] of background checks.

[00:36:01] The challenge for the employer is you gotta make sure

[00:36:04] that you can remove fact from fiction

[00:36:07] and people's own biases.

[00:36:09] So I've done it.

[00:36:10] I'll check and say, and you know what, Bob, come on.

[00:36:13] Someone, listen, when you and I first met

[00:36:16] and I considered doing a show with you,

[00:36:18] I called around, hey, is this guy a good guy?

[00:36:20] Like, am I gonna get a gotcha question?

[00:36:22] Is he an ethical person?

[00:36:24] Like, he doesn't have to agree with me,

[00:36:26] but I gotta make sure, you know,

[00:36:27] it is the normal way that we unofficially background check.

[00:36:32] It's the norm.

[00:36:34] The light, we look at without even talking to someone,

[00:36:37] I sometimes can look at yourself.

[00:36:39] Who are you connected to?

[00:36:41] High quality people or questionable people?

[00:36:43] Like this is just the way the world happens.

[00:36:45] You called it, it's reality.

[00:36:47] I would just encourage all of you listening today.

[00:36:50] Be very careful.

[00:36:52] Know that everyone has,

[00:36:54] if you've worked more than a year in corporate America,

[00:36:56] call it that or anywhere,

[00:36:58] there's someone out there

[00:36:59] who will say something negative about you.

[00:37:01] So you can't, you've gotta take the totality

[00:37:03] of what you hear.

[00:37:05] People will speak negatively about Bob

[00:37:08] because they once worked for Bob

[00:37:10] and maybe that person should have been fired,

[00:37:12] but they're forever gonna say Bob was a bad manager.

[00:37:15] So you gotta make sure you separate,

[00:37:17] figure out what truth is

[00:37:20] if you're gonna make hiring decisions

[00:37:21] based upon these unofficial backgrounds.

[00:37:23] Okay, so just to go down the ladder here,

[00:37:27] it is legal.

[00:37:28] Yep.

[00:37:30] Ethics is in the eye of the beholder,

[00:37:32] but in your view,

[00:37:33] there's nothing that is glaringly unethical

[00:37:36] about an employer doing that.

[00:37:38] Then it comes down to kind of judgment and discretion

[00:37:42] and realizing that to your point,

[00:37:45] I can't imagine Johnny Taylor as any haters,

[00:37:47] but just for argument's sake,

[00:37:49] that somebody would potentially say something negative

[00:37:52] and to do that as you say in the totality,

[00:37:55] like dip the stick in the water in more than one place

[00:38:00] if you wanna find out what the water's really like.

[00:38:02] So, right?

[00:38:03] So I'm glad we're talking about this

[00:38:06] because my comment on social media is like,

[00:38:12] maybe my moral compass is on the fritz right now,

[00:38:15] but I don't even know why we're talking about this.

[00:38:19] I call it due diligence,

[00:38:21] but there are some people in fairness

[00:38:23] because I wanna be respectful

[00:38:24] to not everybody sees the world the way that I do.

[00:38:27] Some people really thought of it as being unethical

[00:38:30] because of the opportunity

[00:38:32] that you're going to find that hater

[00:38:35] and now I'm not going to get a job

[00:38:37] that I should have gotten

[00:38:38] because somebody's got a vendetta,

[00:38:40] an agenda, whatever against me

[00:38:43] and that didn't feel fair to some people.

[00:38:47] And let me just say this in short,

[00:38:49] violently agree with the people raising it.

[00:38:51] I saw that same post and all of everything that,

[00:38:54] but I will say this,

[00:38:55] if you've gotten to the point

[00:38:56] where I'm doing a background check on you,

[00:38:58] I want you as an employer.

[00:39:01] So I'm not, even if one person says something negative

[00:39:04] and I now have eight people who said positive things,

[00:39:07] I'm gonna put that in perspective as a hiring manager

[00:39:11] and say, maybe this person just doesn't like him or her.

[00:39:14] They have an ax to ground, whatever.

[00:39:16] What we're talking about is we're trying to identify,

[00:39:18] are there things that we need to be aware of

[00:39:22] that may not quite have risen

[00:39:24] to the level of criminal liability?

[00:39:26] I'm gonna tell you something that you're wrong,

[00:39:27] but it's, we have an employee,

[00:39:29] we had an employee at an organization in which I worked

[00:39:31] who stole blindly from us tens of thousands of dollars

[00:39:35] because the local prosecutor

[00:39:37] was backed up with serious crimes

[00:39:40] and this is not where I currently work.

[00:39:42] It's a former employer.

[00:39:45] The prosecutor said,

[00:39:46] I just don't have the resources to go after this employee,

[00:39:49] this now former employee.

[00:39:51] So this person does not notice I'm protecting gender

[00:39:55] everything so that you can identify them,

[00:39:57] but this individual therefore has no criminal record,

[00:40:00] but without a doubt they stole tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:40:03] So new prospective employer who happens to know me

[00:40:08] called and said, what do you think about X?

[00:40:11] And I said, well, off the record, let me tell you,

[00:40:14] you're not gonna find a criminal background check.

[00:40:16] Lovely person will charm you out of anything

[00:40:19] including tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:40:22] That's a good one.

[00:40:23] And I was thanked.

[00:40:24] So these things work when they're supposed to work.

[00:40:28] And this was,

[00:40:29] and the person who you get this from trusted me.

[00:40:31] That's why they called me.

[00:40:33] That's how you get unofficial background checks, right?

[00:40:36] So I'm a big, and we would,

[00:40:39] my friend would have hired this person

[00:40:41] into a very senior sensitive role

[00:40:44] without having gotten the information from me

[00:40:46] because a criminal background check

[00:40:48] would have not indicated anything.

[00:40:50] There you go.

[00:40:51] All right, well, as is we usually do,

[00:40:54] it's a complex, everything in this is complicated.

[00:40:56] It requires judgment, discretion, thought,

[00:41:01] but I appreciate the opportunity to discuss

[00:41:03] hard topics with you, Johnny.

[00:41:05] I know, as I said at the beginning,

[00:41:07] our audience appreciates the ability

[00:41:09] to kind of walk around some issues

[00:41:11] that aren't always easy to understand.

[00:41:13] There's usually not one right answer to things.

[00:41:16] So with that, I appreciate you as always.

[00:41:18] So thank you.

[00:41:20] Come on, work wire.

[00:41:21] Right, the work wire.

[00:41:23] All right, thank you everyone for listening today.

[00:41:26] We hope you have a wonderful and blessed day

[00:41:27] and we'll see you on the next episode of the work wire.

[00:41:29] Thank you, Johnny.

[00:41:31] Check out career.club

[00:41:32] for personalized help with your job search.

[00:41:35] Visit shrm.org to become part

[00:41:37] of the largest human resources organization worldwide.

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