BEST PRACTICE #10 FOR PROPER USE OF CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS IN HIRING
Today we continue our recommendations based on a recent paper published by representatives from the National H.I.R.E. Network, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the National Workrights Institute, called Best Practice Standards: The Proper Use of Criminal Records in Hiring, with a look at point #10:
PROVIDE APPLICANT THE OPPORTUNITY TO CHALLENGE THE CRA’S REPORT
Best Practice Standards suggest that “employers should provide applicants with a prompt and convenient method of challenging information in the CRA’s report.” Simply put this means that the applicant needs to be provided with a toll-free number or e-mail address for the CRA that did the court check. Then the candidate needs to tell the CRA about the disputed information and ask them to verify it or to double-check it. The burden is then on the CRA to use reasonable care to ensure that the information is correct or not.
One side note: the CRA does not have to put forth extraordinary effort to prove or disprove the accuracy of the information obtained. All that is required is the use of reasonable care to double-check the information. If the information comes back the same, and the applicant knows it’s incorrect, it may be up to the applicant to prove it through another method, like a fingerprint comparison.