“I’d rather be in the position of not hiring someone because of what I found than having to explain why I did, and they did something wrong,” Ty Ann Osborn director of human resources for the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is reported as saying. Employers have a good reason for such care because of a negligent hiring suit or theft and embezzlement, at worst, or just having a lazy, useless employee. Landlords have similar concerns and take care because of the possibility of a negligent renting suit and an […]
Read MoreYou are careful about tenant selection and employee hiring. Every applicant gets a thorough screening including a credit check, criminal background search and verification of all the information on the application. In fact, you make sure the application is filled out completely when the applicant hands it to you, and if it isn’t, you hand it back and tell him to fill it out. As a result, you have almost no problems with bad tenants or poor employees. No way can they escape your careful attention. But imagine this. You […]
Read MoreMs. Driver was mad. She drove an ambulance for the “We Really Care Ambulance Service,” (not the real company) and one day her supervisor asked her to write a report about an incident that involved a customer complaint. Ms. Driver (not her real name) asked for a union representative to be present when she wrote the report. She never got the representation. That’s one of the reasons she was mad. Apparently there were more. When Ms. Driver got home from work, she went into her Facebook page and posted comments […]
Read MoreYou would think they would know better. They employ 168,500 people, have 1091 stores, eight distribution centers, and 10 manufacturing facilities, all in the South. But Publix Stores is paying $6.8 million to settle a class action suit because when they hired, they neglected to use a separate piece of paper. They have 11,000 stores in 40 states, but Dollar General is about to settle a $4 million-plus class action suit because they “conducted background checks on job applicants without complying with federal law,” reports classaction.com. You would think they […]
Read MoreDanger lurks in what has become America’s credit jungle. While the danger is an issue for all, it can be a huge concern for employers and landlords. Here’s why. More than a third of people with a credit file, 35 percent, are in collection, some 77 million people with an average collection debt of $5,178 reports the Urban Institute. Multiply that out and the total is $398.7 billion in debt in collection. The data at least give pause. What is important in these figures is that they show a problem […]
Read MoreAverage isn’t always average, is it? If we look at the overall credit card debt without regard to income, education, and age, the average credit card balance is $3,600. But that’s only per person for resident U.S. adults. That includes people who don’t have a credit card and who have a Social Security Number reports creditcards.com. What we’ll look at here are the several different ways that “average” credit card balances get calculated. Your conclusions from this are up to you, as Ezra Becker of TransUnion says, “It depends on […]
Read MoreIt’s called FICO 9. That’s the descendant of FICOs 1 through 8, the credit scores spawned from the Fair Isaac Corporation, the credit-scoring company. The FICO score, a number between 300 and 850 that many lenders use to judge the creditworthiness of prospective borrowers. The higher the better for borrowers since a higher score can result in a lower interest rate and possibly better loan terms. Jim Wehmann, executive vice president for scores at Fair Isaac, is quoted in a Fair Isaac news release as saying “FICO Score 9 uses […]
Read More“It’s not fair!” So goes the mantra of prospective employees and tenants who have been turned down for employment or renting because of poor credit. Is it fair? What I used to ask my children when they said that was “Why isn’t it fair?” They stopped asking soon after that. Looking at the responses of job seekers who have apparently been rejected on the basis of a credit report is even more enlightening. A letter to the editor in the Allentown, PA Morning Call in 1999 contained the following: “But […]
Read MoreIf you have taken more than three or four applications, you might have discovered that job applicants and rental applicants are sometimes less than forthcoming. Things get left off; other things get embellished; still other things are “forgotten.” According to a 2014 Hireright Employment Screening Benchmark Report, 88 percent of survey respondents said that employment screening had “exposed a job candidate who lied on a resume.” Usually the omissions and embellishments are easy enough to ferret out. The US Department of Labor offers the following statistics: 1. 53% […]
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