'Won't get fooled again': effective use of background checks: don't let potential employees get away with lying about work history and more.

• Author: Cummings, Judith
• Position: HUMAN RESOURCES

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This article is the second of two articles on the challenges facing employers in making sure the applicant they select for a job is really who they think they are. Last month we examined the problem of resume fraud. This month we will look at effective and legal methods of checking a job candidate's background to avoid the costs and potential liabilities of hiring the wrong person for the job.

Ava seemed to be the perfect new hire for the position of administrative assistant for a busy real estate office. Her resume detailed more than five year's experience as an administrative assistant for a real estate office in Houston. Although she had only recently moved to the community, she had worked temporary positions for two local employers. Most impressive was that she was a business management graduate of George Washington University. Within a few weeks, however, the office discovered that not only did Ava lack any knowledge of basic real estate concepts, she lacked grammar and writing skills. What happened to the perfect hire?

Ava, like an estimated 33 percent of all job applicants, lied about her qualifications in order to get the job. Her job in Houston had been as a waitress and her education ended with high school graduation.

The best way for an employer to weed out candidates who are not actually qualified for a position is to check on the accuracy of the information provided by the job candidates in their resumes, applications and interviews. This kind of background checking can make the difference between profiting from a great hire or losing money and customers from a bad hire.

LEGAL LIABILITY FOR NEGLIGENT HIRING

There are circumstances in which failure to check up on the background of job candidates can result in legal liability for an employer. Under the legal theory of negligent hiring, employers can be sued if they knew or should have known that an employee was unfit for the job.

One of the best-known cases where an employer was held liable for negligent hiring was in Minnesota when an apartment management company was held responsible for the assault of a tenant by the handyman hired by the company. The company's failure to do a full background check was identified as a cause of the assault. Examples of employers held liable include those who failed to check on driving records of truck drivers who caused accidents, on criminal convictions for day care workers found to have abused children, and on the...