As concerns about falsified applications grow,
so does a business opportunity.

A job applicant looks good on paper but is he really what he seems? Did she really work where she says she did? Was there a problem that would make him an undesirable hire; theft perhaps? These are a few of the questions human resources professionals face when they consider a new hire.

Two New Jersey companies which help businesses screen job applicants are Pretiem, a pre-employment screening company, and Guardscreen, a company specializing in meeting the needs of employers who hire security guards.

“The HR departments today are really overburdened with other issues,” states Pretiem’s David Kennedy.

Guardscreen is a Metuchen-based company founded and owned by Fern Abbott, who hardly looks like the stereotypical hard-bitten private detective.  Nevertheless, she also heads Abbott Investigative and Consulting Services, a detective agency. She’d rather be called a private investigator than a private detective and doesn’t carry a gun or look particularly tough. But don’t be fooled, she holds a black belt in karate. Abbott dreamed up the security database concept 10 years ago after watching a television newscast about a California security guard who set fire to a movie studio.

“I thought it was too bad that Company A didn’t know he went to Company B and Company B had no way to check what wasn’t on his job application. The light bulb lit and Guardscreen was born,” Abbott explains. She then set up what she says is the first U.S. company specializing in job screening for security officers.

There are no charges for security companies that want to enroll in Guardscreen. Abbott’s only requirement is that they provide the employment data on all their security workers. She and three employees - one full time, two part time- then enter the data into Guardscreen’s three state database for New Jersey, New York and Maryland. She currently has more than 80,000 security personnel listed in the NJ database, 65,000 in Maryland and about 2,000 in New York, where she is now expanding.

To entice security companies to join, she offers them a month’s free service. After that, she charges $9.50 per pre-employment check when she is able to verify an employee’s history in her database.

Abbott claims her service actually saves companies money. If it turns up a problem, she says, it can save them from spending the $84 it costs to run the full criminal background checks that are mandated by law. Those checks, she says, can take as much as three months, while she can typically turn hers around in one day.

Demand for services like those offered by Pretiem and Abbott is growing. “Some 69% of those surveyed in our 1999-2000 human-resources professionals survey out-source one or more human resource activities, up from 58% the previous year,” says Kristin Bowl, media affairs manger of the 160,000 member Alexandria, Virginia based Society for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest HR professional association.

Bowl says one of the things most commonly outsourced is pre-employment verification, which can include checking out prior educational and work histories, as well as drug screening. She adds that 14% of survey respondents outsource pre-employment screening, up from 12% two years ago. “Of those who verify employment, 35% say they find falsified information,” she reports, especially where people had prior incidents of violent behavior on the job. In 36 states, good-faith disclosures of employment information to prospective employers are protected by statutes. New Jersey and New York are two of only 14 states that lack such protection, she says.

Mark H. Sheratsky runs the New Jersey office of Command Security based in Lagrangeville, New York. “We have 5,000 employees throughout the country and 300 in New Jersey,” he says from his Union office. His company uses Guardscreen as part of its hiring process.

He likes Guardscreen because “it tells us when a person is habitually absent or late.” The timely response is important too, he says.  But he notes Guardscreen “has a limited database. They only get information from companies they’re affiliated with. It’s a portion, but not the lion’s share.” Having itemized his reservation, he praises Abbott’s business saying, “she provides an absolutely great service and you don’t get billed unless there’s a hit” for the applicant.

In an age of specialization, Abbott notes:  “I’ve got about 95% of contract security officers employed in New Jersey in my database.” These are the ones who work for guard companies as opposed to corporations with their own security force. As for the ones working directly for companies, “I’d love to get them,” she says. It’s a lack that can lead to problems. Abbott related one story of a security guard applicant who, in an apparent attempt to conceal his work record, was using two Social Security numbers. “I recognized the name. He had worked for 22 companies in four years. I guarantee you he wasn’t listing 22 companies on his resume.”

Guardscreen.com