Reminders for employers regarding Fair Credit Reporting Act compliance

More and more employers have fallen victim to lawsuits brought on by former applicants for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal law that requires employers to take specific actions when conducting credit checks in order to allow job applicants a fair chance at the position for which they are applying. As a reminder,…

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Care.com background checks receive scrutiny after wrongful death lawsuit

wrongful death lawsuits against both the nanny and Care.com. The website allows caregivers to post information for free, and charges families a monthly subscription fee to access information about potential nannies, caregivers and babysitters. There are three levels of subscription: a $37 per month standard subscription; a “preferred” subscription for $59 per month that includes…

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Days after withdrawing from state, Uber, Kansas could reach compromise

Uber packed its bags and watched Kansas fade in its rearview mirror, the ride-sharing company and the state government have begun working toward a compromise that would allow Uber to resume operations in the state. Uber originally shut down its business in Kansas after an over-regulatory bill — which would have required the company to…

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Could fingerprints be the next leading method for drug testing?

The FBI has a fingerprint database for conducting federal criminal background checks, and plenty of organizations and employers require their employees and volunteers to be fingerprinted as a way to ensure the workers do not have criminal records. But can fingerprint background checks be used for anything besides criminal records? A new study shows they…

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Kansas Senate votes to override Gov. veto of Uber bill

shut down operations in Kansas. “We’re not asking for much,” said Rep. Scott Schwab, one of the bill’s backers. “I mean, in Colorado next to us, they go through their bureau of investigation and Uber didn’t leave there. … We have to make sure, just like everybody else on the road, they have protections.” Meanwhile,…

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Colo. lawmakers introduce volunteer background checking bill — again

In March, we shared that Colorado lawmakers had voted to kill a bill that would protect children involved in youth sports organizations from child predators. The bill sponsors said that employees, coaches and volunteers associated with extracurricular youth sports groups should have to undergo background checks, but the bill was rejected because the Colorado Senate…

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Hiring managers: Avoid these questions when interviewing

new study from Career Builder and Harris Polls shows that 20 percent of hiring managers have asked job applicants illegal interview questions, whether inadvertently or intentionally. Similarly, one in three managers don’t know what kinds of questions are illegal to ask during the interview process. Which begs the question, do YOU know what kinds of…

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April 2015 employment: surge in business, health care jobs

a release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 223,000 new jobs were added to the U.S. workforce in April, primarily in business, health care and construction. The unemployment rate remained steady between March and April, hovering around 5.4 percent of the population (about 8.5 million people). Of the new positions available, 62,000 of them are…

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‘Provocative’ study shows hiring bias for college STEM jobs favors women

new study by PNAS regarding women applying for STEM tenure-track positions shocked researchers when it was discovered that, based solely on resume comparisons, women were preferred for tenure-track university jobs 2:1 over male candidates with identical qualifications. This held true among every STEM field in the study — biology, engineering and psychology — with the exception…

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