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Screening

Criminal records no longer go undetected

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:32

As South Africa’s oldest screening and vetting company, EMPS can certainly be trusted when they say that 2011 saw the biggest transition the South African pre-employment screening industry has seen since the 80’s. On 30 June 2011 criminal checking as most human resource professionals and recruiters know it, was officially switched-off. The well-known criminal name/id check was discontinued, making fingerprint checking (via AFIS or paper-based), the only legal means of checking job applicants criminal records.

The industry as a whole has known about this looming change since 2007, the actual time that it would happen, was the unknown. Having studied the statistics and compared the different checks over the past 3 years, EMPS anticipated a dramatic increase in the number of criminal records picked up in the screening process once this change took place. We know that the well-known name/id check was getting less and less reliable over the past 3 years. 2010 saw an all-time low of 4% of job applicants with criminal records, using name/id checks.

According to EMPS statistics, the first two months, July and August 2011, of “official” fingerprint checking picked up over 10% of job applicants with criminal records, across a broad spectrum of industries. The security industry showed a trend of closer to 13% and both retail industry and merchandising staff around 9%.

It goes without saying that the new criminal checking process is more costly, it’s an operational challenge for companies who have a large national base, and generally it has made screening much more difficult for many companies. But, when it comes to risk and proper due diligence when employing, the statistics speak for themselves, with 1 in 10 job applicants having some kind of criminal conviction, can anyone afford not to do it?