With the steady increase of state agencies requiring fingerprint-based background checks, we’ve assembled a directory of frequently asked questions in regard to the LiveScan fingerprinting process.
What is LiveScan fingerprinting?
Live scan fingerprinting refers to both the technique and the technology used to capture fingerprints electronically, without the need for the more traditional method of ink and paper.
LiveScan fingerprinting provides an automated service for criminal history background checks that may be required as a condition of employment, licensing, certification, adoptions or volunteering.
What do I need to bring with me to my fingerprinting appointment?
1.) You will need to bring the ORI number for the agency that has originated the fingerprint-based background check request. 2.) A valid photo identification. (i.e. driver’s license or ID card, passport, military identification). An out-of-state identification is acceptable as long as it is still valid.
What is an ORI number?
The ORI number, or Originating Agency Identifier, identifies the agency that has originated a request. It is an alpha-numeric code assigned to an authorized agency and once inputted into the LiveScan system, it determines where the results of the background check will be sent. Please be advised that we will not provide or look up any ORI numbers in our office. If you need to obtain your ORI number, please contact the agency that has told you that you must undergo a fingerprint-based background check.
What are the fees associated with LiveScan fingerprinting?
The fees vary depending on the reason for fingerprinting. The fee is usually comprised of an FDLE submission fee, an FBI submission fee and a provider rolling fee. All appropriate fees are listed during scheduling process.
What forms of payment do you accept?
Payment is due at the time of fingerprinting. We accept cash or credit/debit cards with Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express logo. Please be advised that we DO NOT accept checks.
What if my requesting agency requires photo submission at the time of fingerprinting?
Some state agencies now require photo submission during fingerprinting. If that is the case, we have a small photo studio in our office and will take the photo during the fingerprinting appointment. There will be an additional photo capture fee included in your fingerprinting fee. If you are required to have a photo submitted at time of fingerprinting, please refrain from wearing hats or heavy makeup to your appointment.
How long before the requesting agency receives my results?
Most results are available within 72 hours of transmission. For security and privacy reasons, MacData Background Screening does not have access to the results of your background check.
What do I do if my fingerprints were rejected?
Rarely fingerprints get rejected; however, there are a number of reasons fingerprint submissions can be rejected. The most common reason is lack of fingerprint ridge detail. This can be caused by professions that work with corrosive or abrasive materials such as cleaning materials, stone work, etc. Another factor may be age. As a person ages, sometimes fingerprint detail is lost. Approximately 1-5% of the general population is affected by this issue. If an applicant’s fingerprints are rejected on this basis, MacData Background Screening will re-take the applicant’s fingerprints at no additional cost. You will receive a letter of rejection from your requesting agency, containing a TCN (Transaction Control Reference) number that is necessary for resubmission. You will need to bring this letter with you to your appointment.
Can you please send the results of my background check to another agency (or person)?
No. When you are fingerprinted, the record is submitted with the ORI you provided. That number indicates which agency is authorized to receive the results of your background check. The FDLE and FBI conduct the criminal history record check and send the results directly to the authorized agency. MacData Background Screening never has access to the results of your background check. If another agency or company is requiring you to complete a background check, you’ll need to register using the new ORI and complete the fingerprinting process for the new requestor.
We have a large group of people that need to be fingerprinted at the same time, are you mobile?
Mobile services are available for groups of 10 or more within Volusia and Flagler counties. For smaller groups, there is a nominal travel fee. Contact our office for more information.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
5 Ways to Rebuild Your Credit Score
In our busy lives, it is easy to miss paying a bill.
However, your lenders won’t accept excuses for why they you didn’t pay them as you agreed to do. For example, your bankcard company cannot make excuses for being late in paying the merchants where you made your purchases.
When you don’t pay, they still have to pay on your behalf.
Missed payments can have a severe impact on your credit scores. And lower credit scores will often penalize you with higher interest rates – which can end up costing you tens-of-thousands of dollars throughout your life.
So here are five strategies to help you build the best credit scores:
It takes time to build a great credit history, and there are no shortcuts.
By following these five strategies, you can begin the process of building a great credit history, which will produce great credit scores.
Source: http://www.experian.com/blogs/news/2012/09/24/rebuild-your-credit/
However, your lenders won’t accept excuses for why they you didn’t pay them as you agreed to do. For example, your bankcard company cannot make excuses for being late in paying the merchants where you made your purchases.
When you don’t pay, they still have to pay on your behalf.
Missed payments can have a severe impact on your credit scores. And lower credit scores will often penalize you with higher interest rates – which can end up costing you tens-of-thousands of dollars throughout your life.
So here are five strategies to help you build the best credit scores:
- Never miss making a payment. One of the best ways to establish a great credit history is to demonstrate that you can manage credit and pay all of your bills as agreed. Late payments will likely cost you in penalties and can cause your interest rate to rise significantly. But, when you miss an entire payment for the month, it will be reported in your credit history and can have a terrible impact on your credit.
- Reduce your debt on “revolving credit” accounts. You probably know that your credit scores are impacted by the amount of debt you owe. But you may not know that when lenders consider doing business with you, they are going to analyze your utilization rate. That’s just a fancy term that informs lenders how much debt you have vs. the amount of credit available to you. Work on reducing your debt so that you’re utilization rate is under 30% on all your revolving credit accounts. Ideally, you should only charge what you can pay in full each month which means you aren’t using credit to live beyond your means.
- Keep older credit card accounts active. Some people make the mistake of closing old credit accounts simply because they aren’t using the accounts anymore. But older credit accounts with good history can actually help you build your scores over time. Closing the account will mean that great credit history will get deleted after 10 years, which could actually drop your score. So keep older, good credit accounts live.
- Audit your credit report to make sure it’s accurate. Many people don’t realize that they are able to access their credit report for free from each credit bureau every year. This means you could pull your credit report every 4 months from a different bureau to look for signs of fraud. It is important to review your credit report regularly to make sure your identifying information is correct so that all of your accounts can be correctly linked to you. You also want to make sure your accounts are being reported correctly by your lenders.
- Communicate directly with your lender. If you have a delinquent payment listed and you don’t agree that it was late, you may want to check directly you’re your lender to find out why their records do not agree with yours. If they have misapplied a payment, you may need to provide them proof of your payment.
- Go to annualcreditreport.com and verify your identity by answering authentication questions to access your credit report for free. If you can’t pass authentication, you will be provided instructions on how to write.
- Review your credit report and look for any errors (accounts that do not belong to you, delinquent payments that were not late.)
- Dispute any errors as instructed and allow up to 30 days for the account to be verified with your lender. If the lender changes the status of their account, they will also report the update to any other credit reporting company to which they provide their data.
It takes time to build a great credit history, and there are no shortcuts.
By following these five strategies, you can begin the process of building a great credit history, which will produce great credit scores.
Source: http://www.experian.com/blogs/news/2012/09/24/rebuild-your-credit/
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Using Social Media for Recruiting and Background Screening
Online social media sites provide significant opportunities for employers who want to recruit potential employees. But, they also present significant challenges if employers want to use them for screening and background checks. Checking employee job references is even more problematic in online social media.
Employers are all over the board about searching online for information about prospective employees because of potential discrimination and negligent hiring charges. Thus far, the practice of social media screening and background checks by employers is minimal. But, the percentage of employers checking online information will grow as using online social media becomes further entrenched in the fabric of social networking and job searching.
Are you prepared with policies and procedures to integrate the information you find online in your screening and background check practices? *Rob Pickell, senior vice president of customer solutions at HireRight, shares his knowledge about online social media recruiting, screening, and background checks.
How are employers currently using social media as a recruitment tool?
Employers are using social media as a valuable tool for sourcing and recruiting prospective candidates. Social networking allows organizations to build their employment brand and awareness, expand the breadth and depth of their network, target top talent in a large range of skill sets, and improve the effectiveness of their recruiting efforts.
What percentage of employers use social media to find potential employees?
According to a recent research report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 76% of companies said that they do use or are planning to use social media sites for recruiting. More than half of the employers responding said that social networking sites are an efficient way to recruit candidates.
To screen potential employees?
Not much information is available today regarding employer use of social media specifically for the purposes of background checks. But, based on discussions with our own customers, we believe that the percentage of employers using social media for background checks is small. This is due to the potential pitfalls these sites can create in terms of exposing employers to protected class information. Information that could potentially trigger a claim of discrimination can often be found within social networking profiles.
How can employers use LinkedIn for recruiting?
LinkedIn is the web version of business networking. We’ve all been told by someone that networking is the best way to find a new job, and you can look at LinkedIn as the online equivalent to in-person business networking. For job seekers, LinkedIn provides a free and easy way to network with large numbers of people they know and the people that those people know. LinkedIn also allows job seekers to follow the news and job postings of their targeted employers.
For employers, LinkedIn provides a wealth of information about the qualifications of job seekers and can help employers leverage their own networks (and those of their employees) to find potential candidates for job openings. Employers can create company profiles and set up feeds of information (including new job postings) for those who would like to follow them. LinkedIn also offers employers a fee-based solution that allows them to more quickly and easily find potential job candidates that best match the qualifications of the job they want to fill.
How can employers use Facebook for recruiting?
Like LinkedIn, Facebook enables employers to create a presence that reflects their employment brand, find potential candidates, and post jobs. In addition, it enables great opportunities for interaction with candidates and allows organizations to create a community. Facebook was originally geared towards personal communication, but has morphed into a tool that being used more and more for business.
Let’s cover all of the big three social media sites. How are employers using Twitter as a recruiting tool?
For employers, Twitter is primarily effective at increasing exposure and communicating with groups of individuals who wish to follow the organization. It can also be used to advertise jobs. Some companies have job channels and/or individual recruiters who operate dedicated Twitter accounts for communicating with interested job candidates.
How do you balance the advantages of using social media for recruitment with the risks of using it in the screening process?
Social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are valuable resources for identifying qualified candidates and communicating with and recruiting applicants to fill positions. The risk employers need to understand, when using social media as part of their recruiting process, occurs when the process moves from sourcing to screening candidates.
Social media is an ideal way to find and recruit candidates. But, the difficulty occurs when information provided on social media sites is used to screen or explicitly eliminate a candidate from consideration. This elimination, when based on data found through social media content, opens the employer to the potential risks of liability, discrimination claims and non-compliance with regulations.
While there is little direct legal precedent around this issue at this point, it’s likely that legislation and case law will become more clear in the near future. In the meantime, the risks are evident and few companies want to be the focus of any legal action. Given this point, it’s important that organizations have policies in place that protect against discriminatory practices and are explicit in how social media information can be used by employees in the hiring process.
Given these risks, how are employers currently using social media in their employee screening and background check processes?
Generally the social media screening and background check practices by employers fall into three basic categories:
What are the potential legal and regulatory risks employers must keep in mind as they use social media for recruitment or for screening and background checks of employees?
Generally speaking there are at least two categories of competing legal concerns:
What is the relative value of checking social media profiles for information about potential employees vs. traditional screening methods?
Interestingly, the value of conducting social media screening and background checks is likely small for most companies. HireRight conducted a survey in which over 5,000 applicants were reviewed randomly via their social media sites. Of these, just over half had either no public information available or no information that could clearly be associated with the individual. Of those who did have a public social media profile, almost all had neutral information available (nothing that would cause employer concern). Less than 1% had any information that might be deemed concerning relative to a hiring decision, for example mentions of drug use, pornographic material, an orientation toward violence, and so forth.
The flagged profiles were then reviewed by professional checkers to determine the number of individuals who may have drawn employer concern as a result of the screening and background check. In the end, few, if any, had information available that an employer could reasonably be expected to act upon. Only a tiny percentage of individuals posted potentially concerning information.
Given the challenges inherent in acting on this data combined with the effectiveness of current screening tools, the additional value provided by social profile information is minimal. In our assessment, to reduce hiring risk and make more informed decisions, an adequate substitute for a quality background check through a reputable provider, does not exist.
*Rob Pickell is senior vice president of customer solutions at HireRight, Inc. in Irvine, California, a provider of employment background and drug screening solutions. Rob has contributed insights on the use of social media in employment screening to numerous publications, including SHRM.org, ERE.net, Canadian HR Reporter, HRO Today and HR Magazine.
Source: http://humanresources.about.com/od/selectemployees/qt/why-use-social-media-for-recruiting-and-screening.htm
Employers are all over the board about searching online for information about prospective employees because of potential discrimination and negligent hiring charges. Thus far, the practice of social media screening and background checks by employers is minimal. But, the percentage of employers checking online information will grow as using online social media becomes further entrenched in the fabric of social networking and job searching.
Are you prepared with policies and procedures to integrate the information you find online in your screening and background check practices? *Rob Pickell, senior vice president of customer solutions at HireRight, shares his knowledge about online social media recruiting, screening, and background checks.
How are employers currently using social media as a recruitment tool?
Employers are using social media as a valuable tool for sourcing and recruiting prospective candidates. Social networking allows organizations to build their employment brand and awareness, expand the breadth and depth of their network, target top talent in a large range of skill sets, and improve the effectiveness of their recruiting efforts.
What percentage of employers use social media to find potential employees?
According to a recent research report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 76% of companies said that they do use or are planning to use social media sites for recruiting. More than half of the employers responding said that social networking sites are an efficient way to recruit candidates.
To screen potential employees?
Not much information is available today regarding employer use of social media specifically for the purposes of background checks. But, based on discussions with our own customers, we believe that the percentage of employers using social media for background checks is small. This is due to the potential pitfalls these sites can create in terms of exposing employers to protected class information. Information that could potentially trigger a claim of discrimination can often be found within social networking profiles.
How can employers use LinkedIn for recruiting?
LinkedIn is the web version of business networking. We’ve all been told by someone that networking is the best way to find a new job, and you can look at LinkedIn as the online equivalent to in-person business networking. For job seekers, LinkedIn provides a free and easy way to network with large numbers of people they know and the people that those people know. LinkedIn also allows job seekers to follow the news and job postings of their targeted employers.
For employers, LinkedIn provides a wealth of information about the qualifications of job seekers and can help employers leverage their own networks (and those of their employees) to find potential candidates for job openings. Employers can create company profiles and set up feeds of information (including new job postings) for those who would like to follow them. LinkedIn also offers employers a fee-based solution that allows them to more quickly and easily find potential job candidates that best match the qualifications of the job they want to fill.
How can employers use Facebook for recruiting?
Like LinkedIn, Facebook enables employers to create a presence that reflects their employment brand, find potential candidates, and post jobs. In addition, it enables great opportunities for interaction with candidates and allows organizations to create a community. Facebook was originally geared towards personal communication, but has morphed into a tool that being used more and more for business.
Let’s cover all of the big three social media sites. How are employers using Twitter as a recruiting tool?
For employers, Twitter is primarily effective at increasing exposure and communicating with groups of individuals who wish to follow the organization. It can also be used to advertise jobs. Some companies have job channels and/or individual recruiters who operate dedicated Twitter accounts for communicating with interested job candidates.
How do you balance the advantages of using social media for recruitment with the risks of using it in the screening process?
Social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are valuable resources for identifying qualified candidates and communicating with and recruiting applicants to fill positions. The risk employers need to understand, when using social media as part of their recruiting process, occurs when the process moves from sourcing to screening candidates.
Social media is an ideal way to find and recruit candidates. But, the difficulty occurs when information provided on social media sites is used to screen or explicitly eliminate a candidate from consideration. This elimination, when based on data found through social media content, opens the employer to the potential risks of liability, discrimination claims and non-compliance with regulations.
While there is little direct legal precedent around this issue at this point, it’s likely that legislation and case law will become more clear in the near future. In the meantime, the risks are evident and few companies want to be the focus of any legal action. Given this point, it’s important that organizations have policies in place that protect against discriminatory practices and are explicit in how social media information can be used by employees in the hiring process.
Given these risks, how are employers currently using social media in their employee screening and background check processes?
Generally the social media screening and background check practices by employers fall into three basic categories:
- Not accessing social media sites at all for any purpose in hiring.
- Employing social media for the sourcing of candidates, but not using it for screening or background checks.
- Using social media in all areas of hiring.
What are the potential legal and regulatory risks employers must keep in mind as they use social media for recruitment or for screening and background checks of employees?
Generally speaking there are at least two categories of competing legal concerns:
- Discrimination: Most employers have stringent employment policies that prevent their recruiters and hiring managers from learning potentially discriminatory information about candidates. Visiting a person’s social media sites, however, clearly creates the opportunity to view large amounts of information contrary to these non-discriminatory practices. Individuals on their personal social media sites may disclose information about marital status, children, religion, politics, disabilities and even social interests that, by law, must be ignored in a hiring decision. If a recruiter has accessed this data, it is difficult to prove that they were not influenced by it in their hiring decision.
- Negligent hiring: Employers must consider the potential risk of a negligent hiring or negligent retention lawsuit related to social networking profile information. It is possible that if a workplace violence incident occurred when derogatory information was available on the perpetrator’s public social networking profile, that could have predicted the later behavior, the employer may be held liable for negligence in not using this readily available information when they made the hiring decision. Although this situation has yet to play out, the key factors are not unlike those of past cases (where publicly available information was not considered) that have resulted in significant jury awards.
What is the relative value of checking social media profiles for information about potential employees vs. traditional screening methods?
Interestingly, the value of conducting social media screening and background checks is likely small for most companies. HireRight conducted a survey in which over 5,000 applicants were reviewed randomly via their social media sites. Of these, just over half had either no public information available or no information that could clearly be associated with the individual. Of those who did have a public social media profile, almost all had neutral information available (nothing that would cause employer concern). Less than 1% had any information that might be deemed concerning relative to a hiring decision, for example mentions of drug use, pornographic material, an orientation toward violence, and so forth.
The flagged profiles were then reviewed by professional checkers to determine the number of individuals who may have drawn employer concern as a result of the screening and background check. In the end, few, if any, had information available that an employer could reasonably be expected to act upon. Only a tiny percentage of individuals posted potentially concerning information.
Given the challenges inherent in acting on this data combined with the effectiveness of current screening tools, the additional value provided by social profile information is minimal. In our assessment, to reduce hiring risk and make more informed decisions, an adequate substitute for a quality background check through a reputable provider, does not exist.
*Rob Pickell is senior vice president of customer solutions at HireRight, Inc. in Irvine, California, a provider of employment background and drug screening solutions. Rob has contributed insights on the use of social media in employment screening to numerous publications, including SHRM.org, ERE.net, Canadian HR Reporter, HRO Today and HR Magazine.
Source: http://humanresources.about.com/od/selectemployees/qt/why-use-social-media-for-recruiting-and-screening.htm
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