Slashdot Mirror
How Far Should a Job Screening Go?
SlashSquatch asks: "My sister is getting screened for a programming position with a financial firm. I was alarmed to hear she'll be getting fingerprinted at the Sheriff's Office as part of the screening process. Instantly I conjure up scenes of frame-ups and corporate scandals. I want to know, should this raise a flag? Would you submit to fingerprinting, blood tests and who knows what else (financial, genetic code, and so forth) for a programming position?"
I've drawn my line at looking at my financial and even my health records; some people feel these help tell whether you are 'stable' but some of the most creative types in the world are financially incompetent. I myself am bipolar so neither of these records should be a reflection of what kind of person I am as far as I'm concerned especially now that I have found a decent medication and stayed on it continuously for over a year.
I understand that employers feel they need to protect themselves but they shouldn't be so paranoid as to limit their employee pool to only the financially stable, mentally stable and law abiding. They'll never get someone who thinks outside of the box then.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Indeed. Why do people trust these background checks and pre-employment tests so much? Whatever happened to a good old intesive face to face interview? As an example I took a test to be hired by a armored car company several years ago. It was to be one in a series of tests and background checks (including a polygraph) that a person had to go through to get employement with this company.
To make a long story short I was told that the test said that I was, in this order, too smart and possibly dishonest. Walt helps Locke out of the pit. Charlie drowns when Mikhail blows up the underwater station. Jack attempts to contact Kate in flash-forwards off the island. A short time later one of their own employees, presumably having passed all these tests, stole over $7mil from one of their trucks in broad daylight at a major interstate rest stop and got away with it (caught by his own stupidity several months later).
Just because someone passes these tests and checks doesn't mean that they won't rip you off or comprise your business. It does give a basis but relying on it too heavily is a sure way to get screwed.
Seven million Americans - one in every 32 adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of 2005, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday. Source
I seriously wonder what these companies will do when just about everyone of legal voting age has had some kind of a run in with the law. Interestingly, in Sweden and some other Euro countries (states whatever they call themselves now), its illegal for an employer to ask these same questions... "Have you ever been convicted of..." buck stops there in Europe. Better would be to ask "Are you qualified for the job... If you've ever been convicted of anything, do you think it will hinder you from the position you are applying for..." Or something carefully worded along those lines.
Infiltrated dot Net
Besides alot of people will do alot of things for money, if your sister doesn't do what that company wants, I bet there are hundred of other in line behind her for that job.
Putting aside how disturbing that sounds out of context, that is not always the case. You generally have more bargaining power at this stage than you think. Consider that that the company just went through a process of posting a position, narrowing down the field to the few they want to interview, then choosing one and making the job offer. They may be able to just drop you and move to their second choice but then they may be excited about obtaining you as an employee and want to do whatever necessary to get you. They certainly do not want to go through that whole process again if there were no other viable candidates and they can avoid it.
Or look at it this way, if they can easily dump you without a second thought the moment you wish to discuss opting out of personally invasive investigations, or altering an overreaching IP agreement then they could easily dump you at any time and do not consider you all that valuable. Do you really want to work there?
If you are desperate and will do anything for money then suck it up and deal with whatever they want to do to you. If you are looking for a place to have a career then it might be worth not settling and continuing to look for employment elsewhere.
Finger printing is the limit for me... I've turned down two jobs in the past that required I be finger printed. Both companies seemed appalled that I would turn them down for something so "petty". One of them seemed to understand when I explained that I felt the measure was a severe violation of my personal privacy and decided to wave the need for the finger printing. I this was a smaller company though, I would suspect any company of reasonable size with those kinds of policies in place wouldn't have the flexibility to bend the rules like that.
Collector's Edition
Proactive anti-discrimination law only covers six key areas of discrimination (sex, race, age, disability etc), but these laws demand that firms take positive action to prevent the possibility of such discrimination, whether it be deliberate, incidental, cultural, systemic, institutionalised etc. As such the firm must be able to prove that they took every step to prevent discrimination if it ever comes up in court, or they are liable.
However, having such proactive laws in these specific areas is not enough, as discrimination can be exercised in a number of other areas and in subtle ways. Therefore the law makes clear what areas are acceptable for discrimination (in the literal sense) between applicants/candidates for a job. It pretty much boils down to merit: candidates must be selected on the grounds of their ability to do the job, whether that be qualifications, experience, testing or whatever. If an applicant feels that there may have been a discriminatory decision made on any other grounds, the firm has to be able to defend their decisions in court/tribunal/whatever by providing evidence that their decisions were reasonable.
There are legal exceptions to this, but they are quite specific and usually down to health & safety or security, or sometimes public reputation in certain high-level positions. In truth, the practices become more discriminatory the higher-up you go, where laws seem to be more flexible (the very epitome of "privilege"), but for 99% of the population there is no way such "checking" as fingerprinting, financial records, blood samples or anything else would ever be used, nor even contemplated, in case somebody decided to question the practices in court.
One final point on that note, though. A friend of mine applied to work for the Civil Service (powerful, unelected working body of Central Government). She got through all the main tests and interviews, and her final interview was quite invasive. One thing she was asked, which always stuck in my mind, was something along the lines of "Do you feel that you participate in any activities which might leave you open to blackmail to any degree?". I think sexual practices and drug-taking were mentioned as possibilities. I've never heard of anyone being asked that kind of question in an interview before. I can say from experience that she's a massive sexual deviant, and none of her friends or family know, but she felt that she was okay-enough with them finding out to answer "No".
She got the job, anyway.
Disclaimer: I work for local government, where they tend to be more careful about obeying the law and not getting sued...
Meta will eat itself
As someone who has had mental problems leading to debit (and loosing my job) and taking vast quantities of drugs to cope I guess I wouldn't be able to get a job.
Even though I've been put on medication that works really well (after a lot of trial and error) and I've been doing very well in my current position (I got a job in the UK) for over a year.
Those tests are intrusive and don't prove anything, I'd have the option of taking them and not getting a job or refusing and still not getting the job so I think it's better to refuse and let the company know what you think of their tests.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I have never had a drug screening, nor a physical as a part of employment or prospective employment. Almost all my jobs have been white-collar, office-type of work, with the last 4 being programming and IT. I'm in the USA, maybe it's different in other countries.
When I took a position that required a military security clearance, I was fingerprinted AFTER I'd already accepted the position. It wasn't done as a screening process during the interview/consideration stage. I wonder how far along in the process this sister is? If she knows she gets the job once she passes the screening, it seems reasonable to me that a financial firm knows whether its employees have a criminal record, beyond expecting the applicant to be truthful on the application.
I really don't see why the story submitter is conjuring up fears of frame-ups and scandals. Should it raise a flag? A flag signifying what? That the sister will be employed and soon after will have to use the one-armed man excuse as she runs for her life?
Yeah, for nearly all jobs in health care you're required to do:
- Fingerprinting (criminal background check)
- Urine sample (check for drugs/drug metabolites)
- Credit check
- Reference check
Urine samples are usually done at random. So if you've taken a tablet of someone else's vicodin within the past week or so (and you have no proof of a script stored at a pharmacy), then you're in trouble if you happen to be selected. Most likely, you'd be fired. HR can also force you to submit urine for any reason and at any time. I've had few jobs outside of health care so I'm not sure if all employers are like this now.
Whether or not I agree with it, they say that the fingerprints (and urine samples) are done for the safety of the patients. If they're already looking through your urine, I don't understand the big deal about running your fingerprints, especially since fingerprints are usually not kept on file. I haven't been asked to submit a blood sample for DNA, but to me that seems a little over the top for a programming or finance job. Then again, you can't exactly argue with them - if you refuse, you simply don't get the job. Complaints to people in government probably won't do much at all - hell, our social security numbers weren't supposed to be used for anything else except, well, social security. But now they're used for everything. Imagine, your life and identity stored in a simple, non-secure 9 digit code. But I digress..
I love how you said 'would be'.
The answer to this is: EXACTLY. would be until some bright spark comes up with the idea of using gummies / latex to get yourself a brand new set of fingerprints - and then where are you? Ok. Right back where we started from with the whole 'are you really who you say you are?' security problem.
Let's try this.
A local supermarket (part of a large chain) requires their employees to clock in and out with their fingerprint. Strangely enough, several employees clock in 'earlier than usual' and 'can't be found in the store'. Apparently the gummi bears work quite well. These days (yes, a friend of mine still works there), a manager (sub/whomever is available) has to stand at the door from 10 mins before to 10 mins after people are supposed to clock in or out to ensure people use their own fingers. No, apparently video camera isn't currently an option. Go figure.
Captcha: Outcomes
I was chatting him up in a lab, as a couple of DEA agents watched every move I made. I was handling not just milligrams, but KILOGRAMS of morphine and raw opium gum, filling sample containers and feeding them into the analyser they were thinking of buying. Every paper towel I wiped a spatula with went into their special trash bag, and they even brought pocket-less lab coats to keep me from stealing sample! They even flinched if I used a tissue - clearly they thought I was going to snort some.
BTW: opium gum looks like road tar and gives you a headache from the fumes (not high, just a hang-over kind of throbbing) ... and every time I left the building to get some fresh air they checked my jeans pockets. I would breathe a while, wave cheerfully to the SWAT teams guarding the building, and go back inside. Street value of what that armed caravan brought to our offices to use as test samples was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It's not like a genetic profile that could be used for other stuff, it's just fingerprints...
"It's just [fill in the blank]" is how it starts. Did anybody seriously think that the SSN would become the universal identifier for Americans that it now is? Ever hear of functionality creep?
Are you telling me that's a bad thing?
It's a bad thing that in order to have a livelihood that people are forced to turn over biometrics that will sit (indefinitely) in a database somewhere.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
What exactly does having someone's fingerprints gain you in financial security? So Sister embezzles $1m by wiring it to Switzerland... now what? What do those fingerprints get you?
Seems to me it's a great way to weed out good people in favor of people who can't get any other job.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The military security clearance process requires non-constitutional forfeitures of rights. They can't make you do that until after you are an employee.
Doing work for any financial institution will require a background check. Just to access some data centers I have been fingerprinted. The fingerprinting generally seems to be more regional, being more prevalent in the northeast US and less on the west coast.
if this is in the USA, the SEC is calling the shots. The SEC made the rules that all employees have to be fingerprinted and kept on file. My fingerprints are still on file there even though I no longer work at a financial institution.
Uh dude, are you a clueless manager? Because you sure sound like one. It is like you don't even think about the decisions you make. Unless the position you are trying to fill has the person working with money then a credit check is completely unneccessary and if any possible employer of mine were to ask for one I would tell them no thanks and I would find someplace else to work. It is NONE of your damn business what my financial situation is. You are part of the problem my friend.
Uh, dude? If you've got 10 maxed out credit cards, I don't want you working in my company. Not knowing how to manage your money, and needing money, are two good reasons for it. Being irresponsible means you may show up late or not at all, needing money means that when you show up,
Yeah, because the only way to end up in debt is by being irresponsible, there is no other way right? How about freak medical bills or having your home burn down? I could list quite a few more but instead I will give you the story of a guy I know:
About 2 years ago this mans wife found out she had cancer and only had about 1 year to live. She decided to spend that year doing drugs and drinking heavily and ended up spending nearly all of their money as well as maxing some joint credit cards. She died in a car wreck not too much longer than 6 months after this started. He was stuck with all the debt she left behind as well as having to pay burial costs and pay to move himself and his 2 small children over 2000 miles away to a state his family lived in so he could be closer to them as well as try to leave his wife in the past. He is now at least ~$50,000 in debt and it wouldn't suprise me if a lot of it was credit cards. This man would never even THINK about stealing, he just wants to work and pay off his debt and support his family. Guess what? He has had a hell of a time finding a job and has spent the last half of a year working at a restaurant and part of the reason he has been turned down for other jobs is because of credit checks. How is this fair? You seem to think "oh, he is irresponsible and can't manage money since his credit is bad. I wouldn't want to give him a chance to turn his life around and pay off those bills. I mean obviously he would try to steal shit from my company."
Something is just not right in your head if you honestly think that way, open up your mind a little bit.
As far as responsibility and wanting to know if the applicant will show up to work why don't you do something that makes sense like call some of his former places of employment and ask them if they would hire him again and if they had any problems with him while he worked there? That at least makes sense instead of just assuming they are irresponsible and will steal shit from you since their credit is bad.
What company do you work for? I want to make sure I never apply for a job there.
Good day.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
While I agree it may be deemed necessary by some companies to do this, it is far too easy for the "deeming" to spread, and the only way the only way to keep this kind of thing in check is for the potential employees to vote with their feet - once a job reaches a threshold whereby enough good people are turning it down because they disagree that a particular job is WORTHY of that level of scrutiny, then an employer is going to have to listen and tone down their policies. Congratulations on having the scruples to say no to these offers, Manticor; I would very much like to think I would too if it ever happened to me (I'm a firm believer in privacy and kick up a fuss whenever I'm asked to provide ID for anything) but in this case it's so close to the bone that that I just can't promise I would for what I assume would be a pretty well paid job in a "financial institution"; consequently I feel really disappointed in myself :S
CheShA: Manchester Breakcore / Drill and Bass Yes I'm a s