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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?"
Happy sunshine trusting in the inate good in all people is how we got Active X controls that could format your hard drive from the web. Sometimes, people are douchebags. And while you know your sister, most people in the world don't. With what's at stake, they'd prefer to avoid the scenerio in which they have to explain their lack of due care with respect to retroactively obvious red flags in her background. You could always, out of the kindness of your heart and fraternal love, pay her to sit at home and play Wii.
then that is too far
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.
for a job interview, well, I think it was a job interview, I mean the guy in the alley gave me $50 to watch. That makes it a job interview, right? He wanted to know if I could make smalltalk with a lisp then hack my python till it spewed Java. that sounds like a tech job doesn't it?
Depending on the sensitivity of the position, you *will* have to do things like this. If you're a programmer in a financial services firm, you might be in a position to backdoor systems for financial gain. I can see why they'd want to make sure you're not a known criminal.
Getting fingerprinted is typical in the banking industry. Some banks just require this of all employees while others only require it of people who touch money or deal with the financial numbers. If a programmer would be anywhere near the software involved in manipulating the numbers in accounts, they are "touching the money" enough to be fingerprinted.
If you don't want to be fingerprinted, don't apply for a job in banking, or in a few other areas like law enforcement, government intelligence related jobs, education below the college level, etc.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Essentially, it's about the business not the job. Financial companies have access to a lot of inside information, a lot of personal information and a lot of money. As a result, they also have a lot of safety and security regulations. And if they are not stupid, they have their own company policies concerning security above and beyond any regulation.
Anyone working for such a company gets screened, basically for any indications of financial burden or potential blackmail (so they know someone else can't blackmail you into doing something illegal against them.) They look for general signs that you might be a risk for illegal behavior.
These policies cover everyone in the company, even if you are just programming something not related to someone elses money.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
I think the poster is way off. When you work in finance, you get fingerprinted because of SEC requirements (when they investigate insider trading or other wrongdoing, they often fingerprint the documents used so you can't say someone forged your signature). She probably falls under the class of employee requiring this because she has access to some sort of non-public information or real time market data not generally available to the public. I don't see anything to get heated over here. This is standard practice in finance.
I'd be concerned when they ask "Do you think you're special, Mr. Anderson?"
[Insert pithy quote here]
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
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.
Sorry pal, I was about to mod you Insightful (two spare mod points :) but I have seen a lot of comments against fingerprinting and I thought I would better write my comment to "defend" it.
The first poster (Anonymous Coward) stated it very well, she is working in a Financial Institution. I think the security on those is similar if not better (or worst? depending on POV) than the goverment agencies (CIA, FBI, DOD, ETC) because the information being played with there is *very* sensitive.
Also, I do not know what is so fucking outrageous about finger prints, my father has a ranch, and when I was younger we went every saturday to pay the pawns theyr week salary, and my dad kept a book for the payments (ala spreadsheet). Some of the pawns didn't know how to read/write, hence my father used their fingerprint as a signature to acknowledge payment. That is a common practice to autenticate people in poor countries. And it is way better thana lousy signature.
Again agreeing with the AC, I think that, if she does not want to be deeply screened then Finance is not an industry where she should get a job. She might preffer going to Google, Amazon or any standard software shop...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Besides, having seen some of the keyboards I've been exposed to in different jobs....how do they get through all of that crap to get fingerprints?
...no shit, cheezy poof powder! Oh! Fingerprints?...Uhmmm... ....it could be anywhere from one demented asshole, to three million high-turnover, disgruntled employees!?!
Forensic lab tech1: 'We've got the results analysed...
Forensic lab tech2 '...and it's definately Mountain Dew, Cum Stains, Red Bull, and...
Forensic lab tech1:
Forensic lab tech2:
Forensic lab tech1: 'Basically, we need more data to pin this down...'
Forensic lab tech2: 'Ah, yeah...Hmmm?...which server had that pr0n directory on it?
Forensic lab tech1: 'Sounds like a plan...you grab the Mountain Dew, and I'll grab the cheezy poofs!
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You are correct. It is an SEC requirement.
When I was working in Chicago, I was fingerprinted by each of the three exchanges where we had computer equipment, booths, and traders working in the pits. This was in order to get a clerk's badge, to facilitate quick access to the floors and interstitial spaces should equipment issues arise. It wasn't the firm that did the fingerprinting in my case (it was a privately held fund--no customers, in other words), but SEC requirements meant that my fingerprints would be on file, and all of my banking and private investment details disclosed to ensure I wasn't engaged in insider trading or what have you.
Many of the SEC requirements are big-brotherish and Orwellian (e.g. keeping logs of all electronic chats, keeping two archives of all incoming and outgoing emails going back years, etc.), but the blame needs to be placed where it belongs: on the SEC, and the crooks that have made such a hash of the markets at times that such draconian measures are thought to be unavoidable if the financial integrity and viability of the markets is to be protected.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy