Blog, Employee Spotlight
Stephanie Whalen has been a valued member of SELECTiON.COM® since the beginning. Here’s a little more about her.
Favorite part of working at SELECTiON.COM®
I enjoy working with numbers and the people I work with.
Favorite Hobby
Watching sports.
Favorite Quote
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”- Eleanor Roosevelt
Favorite Food
Fresh food.
Favorite Sports Team
Cincinnati Teams and The Ohio State Football
Fun Fact
I’ve been with SELECTiON.COM® since it’s beginning -even before we had official office space.
Blog, Resources
by Thomas Wright, Satisfaction Executive
SELECTiON.COM®
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been in the news a lot recently with its first and only director, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, stepping down the day after Thanksgiving and announcing his intent to run for Ohio Governor.
Created in large part because of the 2008 recession and accompanying housing bubble, the CFPB is still a fairly new government agency by any standard.
It’s not surprising, then, that many Americans, although having heard the name, still don’t know what the CFPB does.
So, let’s take a slightly deeper dive.
According to the CFPB website, the bureau’s primary task is “to provide a single point of accountability for enforcing federal consumer financial laws and protecting consumers in the financial marketplace” from potential wrongdoing by banks, credit lenders, brokerages, insurance companies, etc.
Designed to “protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices” by acting against companies that break the law, CFPB records show that it has helped more than 29-million consumers secure nearly $12-billion in relief as of July 20, 2017.
To date, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has handled more than 1.2-million complaints.
The six core functions of the CFPB include:
- Rooting out unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices by writing rules, supervising companies, and enforcing the law
- Enforcing laws that outlaw discrimination in consumer finance
- Taking consumer complaints
- Enhancing financial education
- Researching the consumer experience of using financial products
- Monitoring financial markets for new risks to consumers
As a background check company tasked with assembling consumer credit or other consumer information for the purpose of furnishing reports to third party clients, SELECTiON.COM® is required to operate under the guidelines of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)
Under law, the consumer has the right to know that a background report is being compiled as part of their application, that no search will be conducted without their approval and to see what is in these reports upon their conclusion.
Maintaining the accuracy of collected data is also required and the CFPB, acting in its capacity has the regulatory arm of the FCRA, has ruled in multiple instances against consumer reporting agencies that failed to take basic steps to assure the information reported about job applicants was accurate.
At SELECTiON.COM® we are always monitoring our security and our accuracy to provide our customers with complete, timely, secure and accurate results. We are fully FCRA compliant and can help our customers maintain their compliance at the click of a button.
CFPB, CRA, FCRA…it may all seem like alphabet soup and it might not even be important to most consumers. That is, until they get passed over for the job or home of their dreams.
Then, it just may be a job for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
If you’d like to know more about the CFPB, or the results we provide for our clients and our applicants, please contact us today.
SOURCES: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/
Blog
by Thomas Wright, Satisfaction Executive
SELECTiON.COM®
The Labor Department reported recently that the U.S. jobless rate fell to 4.1% in October, a 17-year low.
According to CNN’s Patrick Gillespie (@CNNMoney), “That’s why some experts think the U.S. economy is at, or getting close to, something called ‘full employment,’ which means employers can’t find many more available and qualified workers for open jobs.”1
With unemployment numbers that low, many companies are worried about how they’re going to fill those important positions with quality, reliable employees.
That is what makes it more important than ever for proper background checks to be a part of your screening process.
A thorough background check can make the difference between hiring an applicant who merely looks good on paper, and one whose qualifications are truly legitimate.
Criminal background checks are an important part of the process, but oftentimes it’s an education verification along with a prior-employment verification that can best weed out the less-qualified applicants from the candidate pool.
CareerBuilder recently announced that three out of every four HR managers (75%) surveyed have caught a lie on a resume.2
The most common fib seems to be embellishing skills or capabilities; 62% of respondents say they’ve come across this, and 54% say they’ve caught applicants taking liberties when describing the scope of their responsibilities.3
A quarter have seen people who claim to be employed by companies they never really worked for.
By checking an applicant’s actual employment history against the enhanced version, such falsifications can be easily spotted, but despite the obvious benefits many potential employers just don’t have the time or resources to perform such verifications.
Good news, SELECTiON.COM® can help!
Prior-employment and education verifications are performed by our most senior staff members with an average turnaround time of two to three days.
Prior-employment verification is available for previous positions held, starting and ending dates of employment, eligibility for rehire and other relevant information about the applicant’s performance.
Education verification documents an applicant’s start dates, end dates, major fields of study and degrees earned, areas that are often the most enhanced on resumes today, with an average turnaround time of one to three days.
Combine either or both with a criminal history report and a Social Security Number trace, and you have a great start to hiring the best employee for your company.
Here at SELECTiON.COM® we are a nationwide provider of background screening services. Our plethora of products and reports can help you find the best hires, even with the lowest unemployment rate in 17 years. Contact us today to see how we can make a difference.
SOURCES:
1 Gillespie, Patrick (2017, June 2). America’s job market is bit like the porridge in Goldilocks. You don’t want it to get too hot or too cold. It needs to be just right. CNN Money. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/02/news/economy/jobs-full-employment/index.html
2 CareerBuilder. (2015). Employers Reveal Biggest Resume Blunders in Annual CareerBuilder Survey [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?ed=12%2F31%2F2015&id=pr909&sd=8%2F13%2F2015
3 CareerBuilder. (2017). 75% of HR Managers Have Caught a Lie on a Resume, According to a New CareerBuilder Survey [Press release]. Retrieved from http://press.careerbuilder.com/2017-09-14-75-of-HR-Managers-Have-Caught-a-Lie-on-a-Resume-According-to-a-New-CareerBuilder-Survey
Blog, Employee Spotlight
Jennifer Clark has been a valued member of our Operations team since 2014. Here’s a little more about her.
Favorite part of working at SELECTiON.COM®
I have really enjoyed working for SELECTiON.COM®. I love working at SELECTiON.COM® because of the great employees, having a gym right here at work and the fact that we are a faith based company.
Favorite Hobby
Making Jewelry
Favorite Quote
“You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take” – Wayne Gretzky
Favorite Food
Penn Chips and Queso
Favorite Sports Team
Notre Dame Football, Cincinnati Reds Baseball, UC Bearcats Basketball
Fun Fact
I am a girlie girl but I love to go camping, 4-Wheeling and shooting bow and arrows.
Blog
by Wayne J. Jung
Wasp Barcode Technologies recently released their annual State of Small Business Report and not surprisingly more than half of the 1,100 small businesses surveyed indicated that hiring new employees was the top challenge facing them in 2017.
Less than a third of those same respondents also listed hiring new employees as a strategy for growing revenue during the same period.
The high cost of sourcing and acquiring new employees certainly plays a role, as does training, motivation and retention. Just like an employee tends to avoid certain tasks that they don’t enjoy, so too do many employers.
Just like in sports, it’s never a good idea for a business to avoid upgrading the lineup with talented professionals, and that’s especially true in a competitive marketplace.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, September’s 4.2% unemployment rate represented the lowest number on record in more than ten years. And while that is good news for jobseekers, it’s bad news for employers.
A low unemployment rate means that while there is more competition for good jobs, companies are fighting against others for top-tier professionals.
It is especially tough for small businesses who cannot afford to outsource their recruitment efforts, because the time and expense to attract the right people can be prohibitive.
And we haven’t even begun to talk about the costs associated with hiring the wrong person for the job!
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the cost of a bad hire can be as high as 30% of the employee’s first-year income. That can be a substantial hit for any company, made even more impactful when the same mistakes are repeated over and over.
If recruiting, interviewing, training and retaining that new employee is stressful, we can only imagine how hard it is to justify time and expense in the applicant vetting process.
That’s why at SELECTiON.COM® we go to great lengths to not only uncomplicate, but to provide a cost-effective solution to your hiring methodology.
With systems that greatly reduce time, eliminate manual paper filing, improve efficiency and are easy to use, SELECTiON.COM® offers customers of all sizes and in all industries a solution to their applicant vetting process.
Best of all, our solutions are priced to fit any budget and can be customized to your specific needs.
It really is as simple as you select the candidate and we’ll verify their background. That’s why we like to say, “Your SELECTiON®, Verified!”
At SELECTiON.COM® our proprietary Search America™ report is the largest National Criminal Database in the United States, with One Billion records from over 1,500 sources. It’s a multi-jurisdictional search of criminal record databases and Government Watch lists that includes correction records and Sex Offender registries from all 50 states. With this compiled database, we can help to keep your costs low and your coverage level high while providing a quality report.
Contact us today to see how SELECTiON.COM® can take your employment background check process to the next level.
NOTE: The contents of this article are not legal advice for your particular situation. You should neither act nor rely upon anything stated in this article without first consulting your own legal counsel.
