Blog
With fall here and winter just around the corner, business often slows down this time of year. With it, hiring typically slows down as well. But what a lot of companies fail to realize, is that this is the perfect time to start looking for your holiday hires.
Stay ahead of the curve and take the time now to have your ideal employees fully background checked, hired, trained and ready to go as business ramps around the holiday season. Waiting until the last minute can lead to filling positions with less than stellar employees and can lead to lost customers and employee theft, in worst case scenarios.
Running a quality background check should always be a part of the hiring process, but it’s more important during the holiday season.
According to the Jack L. Hayes International 29th Annual Retail Theft Survey, more than 438,032 shoplifters and dishonest employees were apprehended in 2016 by 23 major retailers.
Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and with it, Black Friday. With those kind of statistics, in order to maximize your holiday profits, you need to make sure your employees are both honest and can handle the influx of customers with a smile.
This all starts with performing your own due diligence. The more you know, the more you can minimize those surprise nightmare employees.
The background check should begin with county criminal history reports, as they contain the most up-to-date and accurate information.
I know, I know. You are running a national criminal database so your applicants are run through every single county and source in the United States, right? Wrong. This is one of the most common misconceptions when running a background check.
A national criminal database search doesn’t really contain all counties in the United States and should be used as a supplemental tool after county criminal history has been searched.
Combine the county criminal search with a social security trace report to identify areas where your applicant has lived, and you have a great start to getting the full picture of your applicant’s history.
How else can you avoid the horrible holiday hires?
Use reports that tell you more personal things about the applicant. Character references or employment verifications are a great addition. You can personalize these questions to get answers you would like in the hiring process.
Use questions like: Was he on time? How would you describe her work habits? Is he eligible for rehire?
A well-made resume and good interview can often make one overlook the in-depth details that are so crucial to double check when trying to find a hire that will be a great seasonal or long term employee. These details can make the difference between an outstanding employee and a nightmare.
Contact us today to find out how SELECTiON.COM® can help.
Blog, Employee Spotlight
Employee Spotlight: Diana K. Nelson, CPA, MS, Chief Financial Officer
What is your favorite part of working at SELECTiON.COM®?
I enjoy the staff I work with. I feel blessed every day when I come into work.
How long have you been at SELECTiON.COM®?
Six Years
Favorite Hobby? 
Taxpayer Advocate – Writing proposals to the IRS to implement change.
Favorite Quote?
“Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” – Colin Powell
Favorite Food?
Soup
Favorite Sports Team?
Green Bay Packers
Fun Fact?
I do not watch TV.
Blog
Out of nowhere last week I started humming a familiar John Lennon tune and I immediately reached back into my music archive and pulled up “Nobody Told Me”, a song initially left incomplete due to Lennon’s death, but ultimately finished and released by Yoko Ono in 1984.
“There’s always something cooking and nothing in the pot,” goes one of the refrains and in addition to providing me with the stimulation for this week’s blog post, it also presented the perfect microcosm for the topic at hand – wasted effort and the need to always act with passion.
About the same time as my musical interlude began, I stumbled across an online “factoid” claiming that the number of failed blogs totaled something like 175-million. That’s a lot of good intention, but even more bad execution.
My guess is that there exists a similarly surprising number of failed podcasts, just like the scores of half-written books before and for that matter shuttered business startups throughout history. Good intention. Bad execution.
Fortunately, we live in a world filled with big dreamers, and that’s a very good thing. 
I love to read about the likes of Walt Disney (he of the “if you can dream it, you can do it” mindset) and Nikola Tesla (the inventor who came a full century before the Elon Musk automobile) and Abraham Lincoln (who for the internet generation is almost as famous for the meme/myth about “all of his failures” leading ultimately to great success as he is about his leadership during the Civil War), individuals who dared to dream big, oftentimes failed, but then continued the struggle despite the setbacks and challenges.
Failure is a part of progress, but it is passion that plays an even larger role in ultimate success.
Believe me, it’s not easy to always act with passion. That’s especially true if you’re not sold on the concept, or the message, or the mission.
A salesperson will not be successful selling a product unless they are first sold on it themselves. I call it the “I Am Sold Myself” solution and it appears on every week’s sales meeting agenda here in our office.
It’s the same way with just about every business.
Oftentimes, it takes courage and vision to take that first step, but without conviction and passion you’ll never push across the finish line.
In today’s world, there exists a strong penchant for talking big before the first sale is made, the doors to a new business have opened, or a campaign has started to take shape.
Again, dreaming big isn’t a bad thing, it’s even a large part of developing confidence, unless the passion for success and follow-through are lacking. Then it’s just hollow words.
For years when someone would ask me about what I was working on, what the next step in my career held, or how I planned to reach a certain goal I would recall Steve Martin’s line from the 1991 movie “Grand Canyon”.
“I think if you talk about stuff, maybe that takes the place of doing it.”
Even though I’m not always able to live by that credo, those words ring clear in my head as strongly today as they first did more than 25 years ago.
Focus on the outcome. Concentrate on the execution. Deliver the passion. The results will usually take care of themselves.
Yes, that formula may be contrary for today’s “instant gratification” generation, but there is one constant about business that still holds true.
Results matter.
Blog
Even in a digital world, resumes are still relied upon heavily in the hiring process. Especially in a world of “first impressions”, information provided on the resume is often the difference between an applicant being hired or rejected.
But, how do you know the information is truthful?
In a recent CareerBuilder survey of more than 2,500 hiring managers, 56% have caught job candidates lying on their resumes.
You don’t have to be a math scholar to know that MORE THAN HALF of all job applicants have misrepresented themselves on their application!
If you would have seen this glaring statistic before your most recent hire, would you still have accepted the resume without question, or would you have done more due diligence before making the offer?
Studies show that every time a business replaces a salaried employee, it costs 6 to 9 months’ salary on average.
Even on the conservative end of the pay scale, such as a new hire earning $400 per week for six months, that can cost your company nearly $10,000! 
You can greatly reduce that risk through proper verification and background check services BEFORE making an offer of employment, and best of all it will cost a great deal less than a HALF DAY worth of salary!
At SELECTiON.COM®, we usually recommend three different types of pre-employment verification reports: prior employment, education and character reference. These three reports will help you verify the accuracy of the information listed on a resume.
Most, if not all resumes list an applicant’s education history. For upper-level and management positions, education can be an important factor in the hiring decision. Some advanced positions, such has nursing or teaching, may require specific education requirements.
A SELECTiON.COM® education verification documents an applicant’s educational start dates, end dates, major, fields of study and degrees earned. Other stated credentials may also be validated through the institution when contacted.
Job experience is also a very important factor to finding the perfect candidate.
However, also per CareerBuilder “A quarter [of hiring managers] have seen people who claim to be employed by companies they never really worked for.”
Employment verifications are available so that you can not only ensure that an applicant has the experience necessary for the position, but the integrity and truthfulness to only represent accurate information on their resume.
In most cases, SELECTiON.COM® will work directly with previous employers to verify an applicant’s positions held, length of employment, salary and other relevant information about the applicant.
Lastly, a character reference will provide information about an applicant that the individual more than likely would never include on their resume.
Character references gather personal information concerning the reputation, conduct, and integrity of the applicant.
When you pair these three checks and verify the information on the resume, you greatly reduce the possibility of hiring an applicant with false information.
It’s your job to find the most qualified candidate to fill an opening. It is ours to verify your selection.
That’s why at SELECTiON.COM® our motto is “Your SELECTiON™, Verified!”
SOURCE: CareerBuilder Survey: http://time.com/money/3995981/how-many-people-lie-resumes/
Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) https://online.alvernia.edu/cost-employee-turnover/
Blog
Parents of young children face numerous and important decisions.
Whether it’s health, schedule, nutrition, education and more, questions abound.
One of the biggest decisions comes when deciding what to do with a pre-K child should both parents need to work.
And that brings us to daycares.
By design, daycares are supposed to be fun, providing a child with the proper environment for nurturing, physical growth and learning.
They are also supposed to be safe! 
But with criminal activity seemingly on the rise throughout this country, increased fraudulent applicant reporting and the lack of adequate screening and verification prior to hiring, that’s not always the case.
As a leading provider of background checks for schools, daycares and churches, SELECTiON.COM® is committed to child safety. In fact, we like to say that we have been providing safe environments for all our clients since 1991.
In partnership with Catholic Dioceses throughout the United States, as well as through our participation in national Child and Youth Protection Leadership Conferences, we have developed a specific proficiency for keeping children safe.
Our base recommendation starts with a SSN Trace to determine residency history, and then county criminal searches based on that history. Finally, a thorough search of a proper nationwide criminal database is an absolute necessity.
At SELECTiON.COM® we developed Search America®, the largest criminal database in the United States with more than 1500 sources, including state-by-state sex offender registries, government watch lists, local, state and federal criminal records.
Search America® puts the comprehensive in criminal background reporting.
No parent can ever be with their child 24/7 through adulthood, but YOU CAN get involved by making certain your child’s school or daycare has an established and thorough applicant screening process in place.
SELECTION.COM® is here to help by providing solutions for our clients that ultimately will make the most important decisions for parents everywhere just a little easier.
