I work for a small employer that is wanting to hire a new person for one of our shops. The manager/boss admits she’s made some poor decisions (that is, incredibly bad) in the past. Since the people I’ve recommended have mostly panned out she is drafting me to help out. Unfortunately, we’ve run out of acquaintances of mine who are 1) looking for work, 2) people I could stand working with, and 3) desperate enough to work for relatively low wages. So, we’re taking apps and attempting to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Any recommendations on how to avoid hiring druggies, crooks, thieves, etc.?
(By “druggies” we mean people who show up to work high/drunk, drink/drug at work, or who deal at work - we actually don’t care what you do on your own time as long as it does not adversely affect your job performance or the company.)
My landlord advised asking for their driver’s license number and using that to search for information on them. We will be checking prior work references, and we aren’t hiring anyone without prior experience (although we don’t require related experience). Some folks are willing to give a SS# - how do we use that?
Any other ideas?
We can NOT afford to hire any more thieves, active addicts, and the like.
In my state, the unemployment offices will do skill testing for employers at no cost. I know they do typing tests, but probably also can do other things, depending on job requirements. Won’t help with weeding out thieves and druggies, but might help thin the herd to those that are at least semi-functional at what you need them to do.
Then go to Criminal & Citation Case Records, then change to search by defendant.
Put in their name.
Should weed out anyone with an Indiana criminal record or at least let you know what they’ve been in court for. You can search civil cases through the same site.
Most states have a similar site if you feel the need to search for Illinois cases.
Note that even threatening to do background checks or drug tests will go a long way toward screening out the chaff.
It might be worth paying more. I know that it’s tempting as an employer to try paying as little as possible, but a bad employee at a low wage can easily cost you more than a good one at a reasonable wage.
I’ll second the idea about talking to your state unemployment department. Besides skill testing, they may offer other services. In WA, we’ve received help with writing job descriptions, setting compensation levels, pre-screening and they can even provide a place to do the interviewing. They can be an excellent resource.
I know it costs more, but it might be worth it in the long run if you hired someone from a temp agency. The temp agency does all the screening for you, and it is in their best interests to not send you candidates who aren’t going to work out. It’s a good trial run for the employees and the employers, and you have no commitment if you don’t like the candidate they send you.
You have to be careful about this kind of stuff though. An application process that is more obtrusive than the norm for the job and/or industry is going to turn off a lot of the more qualified applicants. The OP says they’re not offering particularly good wages, so being able to offer a good work environment is the best bet they have to attract a well-qualified employee. Snooping into someone’s background beyond what is directly relevant to the job is not going to project this.
IANAL, but from listening to a radio show just the other day I learned that, in some states, for some kinds of jobs, at least, it is illegal for a prospective employer to conduct a credit check on an applicant. So better check with a lawyer first.
The problem with this is that IME many temp agencies prohibit you from hiring their workers to a permanent job for a certain period, or they make you pay a hefty fee. So if you find temps you really like, it may not be easy to make them permanent.
I recently heard the author of this book speak on how to hire te right people, and it made a lot of sense, and some friends I gave it to said it helped them in their business.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but sitting down and talking with applicants has worked for me. Also, I do the interview(s) with a couple of my best employees present, so that they can answer the applicant’s questions and give me their input.
That’s true. You have to decide if the trade-off is worth it; the temp agency does all the work and screening for you, but you do have to pay them for that work if you hire the candidate they provide. That fee does go down after a while, though - you can have the candidate work for you for a period of time then turn them permanent to pay less. I guess Broomstick’s company needs to decide which is more important - hiring a well-screened, appropriate candidate that they can try out for virtually no risk for a couple of months, or pay less. For a small company, that might not be an option because it is somewhat expensive. I know large companies hire temps all the time.
Ducker’s links and others seem to be able to provide you with the technical information for conducting a legal employee background check.
Your most cost effective approach, however, is to make good decisions during the initial interviewing process. You generally want to have at least three trusted employees/managers interview each candidate in a 30-60 minute session. If someone “feels” wrong, chances are they are wrong.
One thing they don’t tell you in those interview guides is that there are no “right” answers for most of those stupid “tell me about a time when you” questions. They are mostly designed to make the candidate think and to give the interviewer a sense of their character and attitude.
Counter person at a shoe repair shop, main duties are tagging incoming footwear/items, running the register, and handing the complete items back to customers.
Possibly of training as cobbler is there if they work out as an employee.
Yes, and I partly wanted to thank everyone for their contributions. I think they will be very helpful.
I am sensing that I did not adequately communicate just how small this company is. We don’t even have a total of three managers, only one, who might more properly be referred to as “the owner”.
We can not possibly use a temp agency. That is because, in addition to whatever wage is paid the temp employee, the agency adds more on top of it. That means that hiring a temp that receives minimum wage means we pay minimum wage+some other amount. Back when I was work as a full time temp, that was typically 50% more than I was getting myself. That works out to $10.87 an hour which we simply can’t afford at this time. The money simply isn’t there.
Yes, it is a problem. It’s a small company, it hasn’t been around long, and like a lot of other folks this economy isn’t helping any. They have, I estimate (my estimation, the boss has not directly discussed this with me) lost $10,000+ this year to theft (three employees, now fired) and one guy who was sniffing the industrial glue and huffing the aerosols on the job, resulting in damage to customer items we had to replace. This winning combo nearly drove the place out of business this summer. We are starting to recover, rebuild our customer base, and earn money again but now we can’t keep up with the volume, hence the need to hire a warm body. Actually, hiring two or three additional people would be fantastic, but we don’t have the money yet. We’re hoping to improve things, and indeed they are now much better than just a few months ago.
Basically, someone coming to work for us is going to get a low wage now, but if the company prospers their salary will go up along with everyone else’s.
See, that’s the problem - the manager/boss’s “wrong” radar is hopelessly busted. Out of the half dozen or so people she picked to hire I’m the only one who wasn’t a thief or high at work or both. Of the two people I recommended one has become our best salesperson and the other got us caught up on a two month backlog of men’s workboots in 4 days and has fixed some of the busted machinery they inherited when they bought a failed shoe store from relatives of a now-deceased cobbler. Hence, I am now heavily involved in the hiring process. And I’ve already had to dissuade her from hiring a nephew one of her aunt’s was pushing on her (sweet kid - when he’s sober. But sorry, we can’t afford to hire someone two months out of rehab, that’s too much risk for us right now).
Anyhow - I didn’t get into all this detail at first because I was pretty much seeking general information.
I do think we might be able to justify hiring a lower-cost simple background check agency to ensure this is done properly. I am certainly going to make that argument, that’s it’s cheaper to spend some money now to screen out the worst risks.
I don’t think we give a damn about the credit history though, at least not in the usual sense. The best employees we have right now are those we were solidly middle-class, manager or entrepreneur, with college degrees… who are now working for minimum wage. Basically, people shafted by the Great Recession who are falling through the cracks of corporate hiring but who have good skills, experience, and sense and can make the connection between promoting/building up this little enterprise and eventual prosperity for all down the line. However, the sort of people we’re looking for most likely have taken a pretty stiff hit in income and/or credit in the past few years due to a radical drop in income. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of us currently working there have had not just a bad credit mark but an actual bankruptcy in the recent past. I was on foodstamps when I started (the job has enabled me to get off them), and our best salesperson is currently on them since some of her adult children lost everything and have had to move back in with her, resulting in a larger household for the same income. None of us look like a good credit risk now, and no one we’re likely to hire is going to be any better off.
Ideally, that’s actually the kind of person we want - someone like that who is loaded with skills and education and who is, unfortunately, desperate enough to work for low wages in hopes of building up this business. We actually have at least one prospect of that sort right now (former owner of a computer business which has now gone under) but since none of us know him personally it’s probably a really, really good idea to do some checking.
Realistically, we know some people will only work for us until they find a better job elsewhere. One of the hires we had this past year was exactly that - worked for us for about 5 months before moving on. You know, we’re OK with that. He didn’t steal, he did a decent job with his assigned work, was punctual, and made the company sufficient funds to cover his paycheck and then some.
Failing, that, we’d be VERY happy with a competent and trustworthy retail clerk who can be relied upon to show up on time, work a full day, and not steal from the till. Heck, our oldest current employee is 85, works part time to supplement her SS, so we we’d be happy to have a retiree, and our work conditions are probably nicer than Wal-Mart’s.
As it happens, one of the ladies who works at our local get-people-off-welfare-and-into-a-job places is a customer - she inquired about the help wanted sign and we discussed my company’s needs. I’m hoping she sends us a good prospect or two - and hoping we don’t get dozens of unsuitable people.
Anyhow, this is longer than I intended, but it’s weighing on my mind. This is a small enough company that each person’s impact is potentially huge. We literally can’t afford another bad hire.
If anyone’s curious - the current total, including owners (there are actually two) is 7 people, including the part timers.
Then on this criterion, alone, you’re fucked. If they haven’t been caught yet, you ain’t going to find ways to catch them. If they’ve been caught, your methods of finding them will, by definition, work. The ones who haven’t been caught, you ain’t going to catch. Suck it up. Fire 'em as you find them. There ain’t any better way of eliminating them.
One thing we do is, when someone stops in and asks for an application we say “Sure, can you fill it out right away?”
This does a few things for us.
The absolute main reason we do that is because it weeds out the people that can’t fill out an application. I mean, I don’t need the stuff you need to look up. I’m not interested in your SSN or DL# at this point, but if you can’t spell the name of the street you live on or don’t know your home phone number…you might be better off somewhere else. We’ve found, over the years, that a lot of people would just have mom or dad fill out the applications and bring them back in. If you hand them a pen and it takes them 10 minutes to fill out their address or you catch them making a phone call asking for help (or mom is standing over their shoulder telling them what to write) it goes a long way in telling us what kind of employee they might be.
We also understand there’s a wide gap between a kid getting his first job, someone illiterate and someone that’s just plain stupid.
Also, when you force someone to fill out the application right away, you’ll be surprised how often someone will stink of liquor or pot because they thought they could just run in and grab one, fill it in at home and drop it back off another day.
We scribble a little note on the bottom and they’ll never hear from us again.
I got no problem with people smoking pot or drinking themselves into a stupor but if you can’t sober up and put on clothes that don’t smell to make a good first impression, I’m going to assume you’re the type of person that’s going to come into work drunk or get high on your break.
The other stuff I was going to say has already been covered, so I just thought I’d toss that one out there.
School bus drivers make for great part-time help for the hours they are available. They are pre-qualified to be sober and dependable. Quite a few of them are looking for additional income.