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“Must be able to pass background check” This phrase appears in almost every help wanted ad there is today. Companies have gone crazy over doing complete background checks on job candidates and the companies doing the checking and investigating are making a lot of money in the process but do these background checks really tell the whole story or just give the employer a snapshot in time ?. I am not exactly sure when all of these exhaustive background checks started, but I do know after personally hiring hundreds if not thousands of people in my 25 plus years of owning and managing companies that I really never learned much about any of the people I hired until they worked for me. References never really accurately assessed whether a candidate would be a good employee, the only thing that ever worked for me were long interviews and a deep look into the soul of the person I was interviewing through direct eye contact. I guess I hired on gut feel to be honest, but for the most part my gut feel served me well. I had my first experience with a background check today as part of applying for a position and it made it very clear to me how damaging these reports can be without telling the whole story about someone.
This happens to be my story and while the message I want to deliver is how you can overcome any obstacle, some obstacles that are appearing for people today are not only unfair but unjust. In my case, I feel like I have come to a place in my life where I can overcome any obstacle thrown in my path and the trick is looking for the good in every obstacle. Here’s what happened to me, I have been trying to find any job I can to supplement my income and help me dig out of the financial hole I am in as result of my business failing. I applied for almost 600 positions and emailed off over 100 resumes, I finally got a call back and an interview with a major Gas and Convenience store chain. The first interview not only went great it was a lot of fun and the company seemed like a great company with great pay and benefits. I got a call back for a second interview which also went great and I was told that the HR department would be calling me to finalize everything so they could bring me on board. While applying for this job I of course had to agree to the background check and requested that a copy of the report be sent to me. At the first interview, I told the recruiter that my credit was horrible as a result of my business failure and the foreclosure of my home, she told me not to worry about it that while it would come up when talking to their HR people it would not have a bearing on their decision to hire me. Let me stop here and mention what I think about the current FICO credit reports, they only give you a snapshot in time of the most recent history, in my case I personally had perfect credit from the time I was 16 and got my first Daytons Department store credit card until age 47 when the economy tanked and my business failed. So my credit report stinks because of the last two years, nothing in the credit report mentions my perfect credit for 31 years, my American Express Platinum card with no limit that was never paid late from 1983 until 2007, the 20 plus cars I paid off early without a late payment, none of that history matters with today’s credit reporting system. So you have excellent job candidates out there who are unable to get a job because their credit stinks because they lost a job or had some crisis that was no fault of their own. Go figure, there is no justice in that system. So that covers the credit check but what about the background check ?
The background check could be even worse than the credit check. Here’s what happened to me, my background check came back today with an adverse action letter which means that something showed up on my criminal background check that I didn’t disclose in the application. The application specifically asked if I had ever been arrested, which I never have, it then asked if I had been convicted of a crime with a side note that said if the conviction had been expunged you should answer no, so I answered no. What the report showed was that I was charged and convicted of disorderly conduct in 2001 and the way it was worded on the report you would have to assume I was arrested and convicted. But here’s the rest of the story, what actually happened; on February 15, 2001 I was watching my son who was 11 at the time practice with his ski racing team. I saw him get on the lift and also saw a gang of about 10 snowboarders follow him up the lift. It took quite a while for my son to come down the hill but when he did, both of his ski poles were broken in half, he had holes in his ski jacket and he was crying, when I asked what happened he said the snowboarders ganged up on him, broke his poles and beat him up. I immediately ran to the chalet to look for the security people but couldn’t find them anywhere, I then went to the car and got my son another set of ski poles. When I returned to the ski run where my son was practicing, a group of snowboarders showed up at the same time as my son, my son immediately said “those are the guys” I calmly looked over at the tallest one in the group, he was about 6’2″ to my 5’10” and with his helmet, goggles and size I figured he must be in his early 20’s. I asked him why he had his gang beat up my son, his response was an expletive filled rant and threat that his gang was going to get me next, that was it I lost my temper and grabbed the guys jacket and told him never to threaten me of course then a bunch of other parents showed up and the event was quickly ended or so I thought, the next thing I know the snowboarder has called the police and I find out he is 17 not 22. When the police arrived, I calmly told the police what happened and asked them what they were going to do to these kids for beating up my son, their response ” it’s your son’s word against these 12 kids” we have nothing to go on, but you sir can not touch a child ! So now I am the bad guy, well it turns out the police called the kids parents, they wanted nothing to do with the situation (bet it wasn’t the first time) and I was free to go and was told nothing would happen unless I got a letter in the mail from the county prosecutor. So for the next 5 months I worried about the situation until the letter showed up charging me with assault and ordering me to appear at the Dakota county court. This was so unbelievable, I didn’t know what to do so I hired an attorney who I had met at a baseball game (word of advice, don’t hire attorney’s you meet at baseball games, even if they have successfully defending pro athletes in DWI cases). So the attorney and I show up at court (with my wallet several thousand dollar lighter) My attorney has a closed-door session with the prosecutor and comes back to me and says that the prosecutor is a friend of his and that he has worked out a deal, all I have to do is plead guilty and they will charge me with disorderly conduct, give me a small fine and clear the record after 1 year. But I am not guilty I proclaimed, the attorney said this is the best way to handle this, you can never win when there’s kid involved. So while I disagreed, I just wanted it over, we proceeded to the court room and the judge said, I understand that deal has been reached, the prosecutor said yes and described the deal. The judge then asked if the victim (the 17-year-old kid) was ok with the deal, here’s the mind-blowing part where I knew I had been had by everyone except the judge, the prosecutor said, “Your honor I have attempted on at least 40 occasions to contact both the victim and his parents and neither one of them wanted anything more to do with this case, the Burnsville police have also attempted to contact the victim and his parents over 50 times and they had the same result. So here I am pleading guilty to a crime I am not guilty of, would have easily been found innocent of, because the victim never would have shown up and the best buddy, the attorney and prosecutor both got what they wanted. I was so upset, I asked the judge if I could tell my side of the story for the record, he allowed me to do so and gave me a look like he didn’t know why I agreed to the plea agreement. Anyway, the deal was that after one year, this misdemeanor would be removed from record. For years I was a ski racing official and had to undergo a background check each year before my officials license could be renewed, since I passed the background check without a problem every year, I assumed the court had removed everything from the record as I was told they would. It wasn’t until today that I was reminded of that ugly incident and it may have cost me the opportunity for a job that I desperately need. Injustice…only a part of the story and you tell me if this incident should affect my chances of getting a job.
So where is the good in this ? Well, I have to say that God and the Universe always has a plan and I have to believe that the reason this happened today is that there is a bigger plan for me and that I am not supposed to spend my time working at a convenience store. The thing is, when things like this happen to you, it is not always apparent why but I guarantee the reason will be revealed to you and you will find that things always happen for a reason. So I could be furious, I could stay up all night thinking about this but instead I am waiting for something even better to come along and the sign that this happened for all the right reasons. Joe Vitale is a guru of mine and he says when you are focusing on dreams or writing your life scripts and discussing goals you should always say “my goal is to achieve this or something better”. The other thing you have to thing about is the old saying, when one door closes another one opens. Today instead of getting upset about a setback look at it as being just a step closer to achieving what you really want in life, the last door that needs to close before that ultimate door opens. You are in charge of writing the rest of the story, don’t leave it up to anyone else.
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