The Safe Hiring Blog

New Book Reveals How Employers Can Protect Their Businesses

A 25-Point Action Plan that Audits Hiring Practices...For Businesses of All Sizes

Tempe, Arizona –  Facts on Demand Press announces the publication of The Safe Hiring Audit by Lester S. Rosen, Esq., with Michael Sankey.  Hiring new workers is a complicated task. This new book teaches business owners and hiring managers how to perform an effective evaluation of their current hiring practices, identifies necessary changes, and instruct how to implement needed changes.

Laws associated with hiring have sought to achieve a balance between protecting privacy and due diligence. Using the Audit’s action plan of best practices assists a company’s compliance with key federal and state hiring laws, thus helping keep the company out of court and the workplace safe. According to Rosen, “All companies must periodically audit their employment practices to insure due diligence and compliance with discrimination and privacy laws, and determine whether an organization is using the current best policies, practices and procedures.” Rosen added that an effective audit can help establish legally defensible practices for dealing with potentially problematic applicants.

Author Lester S. Rosen is an attorney-at-law and founder of Employment Screening Resources (www.ESRcheck.com), a national pre-employment background screening firm. He also is the author of The Safe Hiring Manual, the first definitive book on background checks and safe hiring, and The Safe Hiring Course, the only online educational course available in the U.S. specifically for the background screening industry.  Michael Sankey is the founder and CEO of BRB Publications, Inc. (www.brbpub.com), and is author or editor of over 40 publications including The Manual to Online Public Records, The MVR Book, The Sourcebook to Public Record Information, and The Public Record Research TIPS Book.

More information on The Safe Hiring Audit.

The “Social Trace” – What It Is and What It Isn’t

One of the most common questions among HR professionals is: What really is the Social Security Trace?

Good question.  We’re glad you asked because it is important to know what the “Social Trace” does and what it doesn’t do.

It DOES find addresses and aliases.  It DOES NOT verify your applicant’s identity with the Government, even though it uses the government issued Social Security Number for part of the search.  We will cover how to use the I-9 verification process to “match up” the Social Security Number with your applicant’s name in the next newsletter.

The “Social Trace” takes the information found in the credit headers of the three major credit bureaus and “bounces it off” 400 separate PRIVATE data bases.  Here’s the information that can be returned:

Previous names, AKAs, alias names, misspelled names, and changed identity.

Whether the Social Security Number is a valid number, when it was issued and what state it was issued in. This is based upon how the Social Security Administration classifies its numbering system, and not based on applicant’s data.

Whether the person with that number has been reported as deceased.

Additional addresses where the applicant has lived or might be living now.
Other names that could be associated with a particular Social Security Number.

Extraneous “junk data” that can be ignored.
This information can provide the HR Professional with additional addresses to search for possible past criminal activity and other names that may have been used in committing a crime.

Expanding searches to undisclosed counties – where all but federal court information is stored – and to undisclosed identities can help provide a more complete Background Screening Report.

At ESR, we provide the Social Security Number Trace along with examination of the “Social Trace” by our in-house experts to help determine whether any of the names on the trace are associated with your applicant.