Background Checks and Job Interviews

Introduction and Alignment

All humans have a past. Some of us have a more colorful (sinful) past than others. For employment purposes, an employer must follow strict criteria when attempting to identify the things in a prospective employee’s past. This discussion assignment will provide a glimpse of the requirements regarding background checks and job interviews; this will enable you to not only comply with the law but to also ensure that people joining your organization are the right fit both culturally and ethically.

Upon completion of this assignment, you should be able to:

• Distinguish what job candidate factors are legal to consider when hiring.

Resources

• Bible
• Textbook: Essentials of Business Ethics

Background Information

In 1 John 1-9, you see that if you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God forgives sin, and many employers may as well. However, employers will still want to ascertain the behavioral attributes and capabilities of their prospective employees. In earlier assignments, you were asked to examine the behavior of leaders. This assignment provides a framework with which to examine the past behavior of prospective employees to determine if they could bring undue liability or risk to the organization.

Instructions

1. Read Chapter 3 in Essentials of Business Ethics. As you read, consider the importance of the hiring process in finding skilled, experienced, and ethical people.
2. Using the resources of OCLS, search for news using keywords “employer background check techniques” and other keywords you identify as appropriate. Find at least two articles that discuss methods for performing background checks.
3. Navigate to the threaded discussion and respond to the following:
   1. Summarize each article that you found in a short paragraph.
      1. Evaluate the usefulness of the technique in generating valuable information that will assist in hiring ethical people.
      2. Provide a detailed evaluation that demonstrates clear, insightful critical thinking.
   2. Determine what types of prior activities are detected by background checks and what information can be excluded in these checks.
      1. Provide two examples of positions that require or should require these checks and defend your selection.
      2. Provide a detailed evaluation that demonstrates clear, insightful critical thinking.
4. Your initial post should be 200 to 300 words and include two academic resources that are properly cited.
5. Your initial post is due by the end of the fourth day of the workshop.
6. Now conduct a critical analysis of a posting by two of your classmates by the end of the workshop.
   1. The topic of your discussion response should be your classmate’s posting and should be written as if you were reviewing his or her posting in an academic journal. Your discussion response should therefore answer the following questions as applicable:
      1. Were the arguments of your classmate articulate and logical? Were the facts correct?
      2. Was the interpretation your classmate provided reasonable and consistent with experts in the field? Was your classmate consistent with both the substance and intent of his/her references?
   2. The focus for your critical analysis is not whether or not you agree with your classmate, but how well his/her position was presented.
   3. Each response should be at least 200 words in length and cite two academic sources. (Note: the academic sources do not count towards the word length requirement.)