Blog Roll: Background Checks as Big Business, But How Accurate are They?
by Jason Morris
I found this blog posting this weekend. This is a great commentary on an article written in Business Week last week. In my opinion, and the opinion of the blog author, the article was not an accurate portrayal of the background screening industry.
See Below:
BusinessWeek has an in-depth article this week on business checks and the accuracy of those records. Its a thought-provoking article that suggests that background checks are a “Wild Wild West” where nothing is regulated. Moreover, despite the headline that question the accuracy of background checks, the article itself doesn’t contain any statistics or studies to show that. Rather, they use anecdotes to make the point.
But when you look at the article, I was struck by one paragraph that’s buried deep in text:
The company [ChoicePoint] conducts 10 million background checks annually and estimates it has about 20% of the U.S. market. “The number of complaints vs. transactions is very low,” says Katherine Bryant, vice-president for consumer advocacy. The [Federal Trade Commission] has logged 695 complaints against ChoicePoint since 2005, some of which related to [a single] identity-theft episode.
So, for those doing math at home,and if these numbers are to be trusted, there is a 0.000023 percent complaint rate over the last three years filed with the Federal Trade Commission for background checks conducted by ChoicePoint. That doesn’t strike me as a huge issue whatsoever.
Tags: Accuracy
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