First, in our security division we run on paperless reporting.  Each of our security officers are equipped with GPS enabled Smartphones or tablets with our proprietary reporting software.  Our clients can log into our system 24/7 and see exactly what is happening at their location without having to wait for a paper report.  Our software can also alert our client or their maintenance team to an incident as it is happening.  By utilizing a paperless reporting system, we not only are helping to cut down on paper, but we are getting our reports to the client faster.  This is why we are the premier security guard companies in the Bucks, Philadelphia and Montgomery county areas.

Next, our employment screening and investigations division is a mostly paperless environment.  Since 1999, we have invested heavily in technology which allows our clients to log in to our secure interface and submit requests either directly or through our integration with all of the top Applicant Tracking Systems.  From entry to results reporting, everything is paperless.  Our researchers work mostly off of laptops at the courthouse receiving requests from us electronically and entering results directly into our researcher interface.  By having an automated office, we can cut down the turnaround time of reports drastically.  This results in you being able to make a hiring decision and hiring offer quicker than others still utilizing paper reports.

Finally, the paper that we do use in our office is securely shred by Titan Mobile Shredding, a NAID AAA Certified company.  Once our paper is shred according to document destruction guidelines, the finely shredded paper is processed and recycled into new paper products.

We are committed to “Go Green” and we try to make every day Earth Day!

For more information about our nationwide Employment Screening and Investigative Services or our regional Pennsylvania Security Guard Services, visit us at www.knowitallgroup.com.

Part of my revulsion with this whole concept I suppose is the fact that in my business, we work hard to prevent our clients from renting properties to the World’s Worst Tenants. We do that by conducting background checks on potential renters, and if you are a landlord in Bucks, Montgomery or Philadelphia Counties, it’s something that you absolutely must do, starting right now.

This isn’t a new concept by the way—professional property management companies have been doing this for years. What’s changing is the way these background checks are being conducted and who is conducting them.

This service is called Tenant Screening and it’s pretty straight forward. A thorough screening of a prospective tenant would include criminal records, evictions, tax liens and judgments, as well as a credit report. Back in the day, pulling all of this information together would have required a dedicated effort—lots of shoe leather between courthouses and offices, file pulling, note taking and typing. Today, with the right resources at hand, it can all be done quickly online, provided you know what you are doing and what you are looking for.

If a tenant screen cost $1,000 or more it would be well worth it because of the potential dollars it can save in terms of property damage, legal fees, and lost rent, not to mention mental aggravation and anguish. But the reality is that a professional tenant screen doesn’t cost anywhere near that—typically it would only run about $35 or less depending upon volume. It’s an investment well worth the cost. It’s also customary to pass this cost on to the prospective renter as an “application fee,” in which case the cost goes to zero.  This becomes a win-win situation for you, the landlord.

This of course begs the question as to why more private landlords don’t do tenant screening, because unfortunately the majority of them don’t. This is usually the result of not understanding the process, or of not knowing where to turn for a professional tenant screening company. But the bottom line is that if you are a landlord, regardless of how many properties you control, tenant screening should become a part of your leasing process.

Some landlords have expressed the concern that all of this information doesn’t really have a bearing on the kind of tenant a person will be. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that people are creatures of habit. Barring unforeseen circumstances, they tend to repeat behaviors over and over. These behavioral patterns can provide fairly accurate predictions of future behavior as well. So someone who has a history of being evicted has a fairly high probability of being evicted again. The same applies to criminal behavior, or credit mismanagement.

As a landlord, you don’t need headaches like that. The last thing you want is to rent your clean and well-maintained property to someone who is going to turn it into a crack house. If it sounds like an extreme example, it’s not—things like that happen all of the time.

Don’t put your valuable rental properties at risk. If you are a landlord, tenant screening should become standard procedure for anyone interested in renting from you.

Mr. Bourne was selected out of over 100 nominees throughout Bucks County by a group of independent judges.  A champagne breakfast will be held November 13^th to honor the 40 recipients.  Both newspapers will be featuring a special Bucks County’s Forty Under 40 section, which will highlight each of the forty honorees.

Mr. Bourne is involved in numerous activities throughout Bucks County.  He is currently the Vice Chairman of the Bensalem Planning Commission, a member of the Bucks County Housing Finance Board and a member of the Bensalem Youth Aid Panel.  Mr. Bourne is a Volunteer Lecturer at the Foundation for Free Enterprise Education Week, a summer program for students in the state who wish to gain knowledge of the Free Enterprise system.  Marc provides drug testing services at cost to various organizations, including the Bensalem Drug and Alcohol Advisory Council for their use within the Bensalem School District’s Student At Risk (STAR) Program.  Marc also organizes various charitable giving programs at Know It All Intelligence Group, such as holding a food drive for the Bucks County Housing Group’s Community Food Pantry.  The employees and clients of Know It All were able to deliver over 225 lbs of food to the Pantry.  This year, Marc has partnered with the American Red Cross and their Holiday Mail for Heroes Program.  Know It All is collecting signed holiday cards to be distributed to our service men and women in military installations and Veteran’s hospitals around the world.

The power to our building has been restored and we will be open and fully operational on Friday, November 2nd.  We will be accepting Walk-In Ink and Cogent fingerprinting at our office from 9:00am to 4:30pm.  NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY.

For Information on our Ink Fingerprinting, click here

For Information on our Cogent Fingerprinting, click here

We want to thank you for your patience and understanding during our outage.

For our Employment Screening clients: Many Courthouses along the east coast have delayed openings, power outages and damage due to the hurricane.  Expect delays that potentially could last through the week.

For our Security Clients: Our remote command center has been activated.  If you have an emergency, please use the hotline number provided to you, which is staffed 24 hours a day.

For our Employment Screening clients: Many Courthouses along the east coast have delayed openings, power outages and damage due to the hurricane.  Expect delays that potentially could last through the week.

For our Security Clients: Our remote command center has been activated.  If you have an emergency, please use the hotline number provided to you, which is staffed 24 hours a day.

For our Employment Screening clients: Many Courthouses along the east coast have closed in anticipation of the hurricane.  Expect delays that potentially could last through Wednesday.

For our Security Clients: Our remote command center has been activated.  If you have an emergency, please use the hotline number provided to you, which is staffed 24 hours a day.

“The Holiday Mail for Heroes Program is something that will only take a minute of time, but will leave a lasting impression on the recipient.  It’s just another simple way to show our support to the men and women of the Armed Forces that risk their lives every day for our freedoms.” states Vice President and Co-Founder, Marc Bourne.

You may also drop off your own signed holiday cards.  If you do, please follow these guidelines:

• Use generic salutations such as “Dear Service Member”
• Do not include letters, home addresses, email addresses or inserts of any kind such as photos
• Do not use cards containing glitter

Know It All Intelligence Group will be collecting the holiday cards until Monday, December 3^rd.

Know It All Intelligence Group is located at 1950 Street Rd, Suite 402, Bensalem, PA 19020 (The Constitution Building, located next to McDonalds).  The phone number is (215) 245-1975.  Walk-In Office hours are Monday through Friday from 9am to 4pm.

Stop by and sign a card for the troops!

About Know It All Intelligence Group

Founded in 1999, Know It All Intelligence Group is Pennsylvania’s premier provider of security and investigative services.  Know It All’s product suite includes employment screening, drug testing, ink and cogent fingerprinting, security guards, background checks and corporate investigation services.

SCHAUMBURG, IL, June 13, 2012 – The National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) announces information from a recent study of background screening companies affirming the accuracy of background checks, refuting a report recently issued by the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC). The study, scheduled to be released later this summer, was validated by veteran market research agency Mathew Greenwald & Associates in Washington, D.C. It found that 98 percent of background screening providers surveyed encounter consumer disputes less than 5 percent of the time out of millions of applicants screened annually. Of the small number of reports that are disputed by a consumer, more than 95 percent are ultimately found to be accurate.

The NAPBS study responds to the recent report released by NCLC regarding the accuracy of background checks, which accuses background screening providers of “routinely making mistakes”. NAPBS refutes the report, Broken Records: How Errors by Criminal Background Checking Companies Harm Workers and Businesses (April 2012), as inaccurate and inflammatory and points to the fact that the NCLC fails to offer any empirical data to back up its findings.

Private and public employers, residential managers, and nonprofit and volunteer groups rely upon criminal background checks to protect their staffs, clients, property and the public-at-large. They realize that better decisions come from more, not less, information involving a job candidate.  People want and need to know who is coming into their home to do repairs, who is coaching their children in the after-school sports league, and who is responsible for client funds. The Supreme Court affirmed the need for background checks in Nasa v. Nelson, and in the past several years, lawmakers around the country have recognized the utility of criminal background checks by enacting countless laws mandating checks to protect vulnerable populations such as the young and the elderly.

In an unsupported and grossly inflammatory statement, the NCLC report claims that 65 million Americans with criminal records are forever tarnished and unemployable as a result of background checks. In fact, according to a study conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), only five percent of employers regard arrest records as “influential”. The EEOC has stepped up enforcement against employers who discriminate based on criminal history, and over 100 cases are pending on this issue. The NCLC allegations that the use of criminal background checks make it more difficult for workers to obtain employment is simply not supported by the facts.

Further, the report portrays the background screening industry as being indifferent to the accuracy of data and states, “evidence indicates that professional background screening companies routinely make mistakes with grave consequences for job seekers”, but the report later notes that “actual accuracy rates are not possible to obtain”. The only evidence to support this statement by NCLC is a self-conducted survey of Listserv Members, which can, at best be said to be a collection of anecdotal comments lacking credibility given its unscientific nature. Furthermore, this statement is incorrect and flies in the face of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which mandates that when a consumer reporting agency prepares a consumer report – one which may contain criminal history information – that they follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information in the report.

The NCLC report also contends that the primary law that protects consumers, the FCRA, “as currently interpreted and enforced, fails to adequately protect consumers when it comes to employment screening”, claiming that even when applicants successfully dispute reports and errors are removed, they are still routinely denied employment.

This claim ignores existing law that requires background screening organizations to provide the consumer with a free copy of their consumer report and which also mandates that reports of inaccuracy or incompleteness by a consumer must be re-investigated within 30 days. Employers who use a background screening company must follow specific adverse action procedures spelled out in the FCRA, which give job applicants a fair chance to dispute the finding in the report. The adverse action and consumer dispute requirements are core tenets of the FCRA and are intended to protect applicants from being denied employment based on inaccurate or incomplete background screening information. These core tenants are aggressively enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as well as by individual states. The NCLC’s dismissive statement that the FCRA is ineffective is not based in reality given the FTC’s enforcement ability..

In 2010 NAPBS launched the Background Screening Agency Accreditation Program (BSAAP) to enforce a singular cohesive industry standard. The accreditation program advances professionalism in the employment screening industry through the promotion of best practices, awareness of legal compliance, and the development of standards that protect consumers. The NAPBS Background Screening Credentialing Council (BSCC) is the governing body that oversees the application process and ensures that the background screening organizations seeking accreditation meet and/or exceed a measurable standard of competence.

To become accredited, consumer reporting agencies must pass a rigorous onsite audit conducted by an independent auditing firm. The audit examines policies and procedures as they relate to six critical areas: consumer protection, legal compliance, client education, product standards, service standards, and general business practices. When NAPBS officially rolled its accreditation program out in late 2010 the leadership projected that it would take up to 3 years for all consumer reporting agency members to complete the full accreditation process. Many are in the process and more are preparing the written documentation needed for the audits required for accreditation.

The member companies of NAPBS help put millions of people to work, including ex-offenders.  They also help consumers correct misinformation that may be contained on them at the actual courts or law enforcement agencies, as well as any incorrect criminal history information that may have been contained in a consumer report.

The NCLC report is inaccurate in stating that less than one percent of background screening agencies are certified by NAPBS because they used faulty data to arrive at their number. Those seeking NAPBS accreditation are the consumer reporting agencies, and not all members listed in the online directory sited in the report.

Providing accurate and complete information is the primary tenet and mission of NAPBS members. To operate otherwise would be detrimental to any business looking to grow in a highly competitive and regulated industry. NAPBS member companies are committed to providing accurate and complete information while demonstrating professionalism, accountability, and a commitment to best practices.

About NAPBS

The National Association of Professional Background Screeners exists to promote ethical business practices, promote compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and equal employment opportunity laws, and foster awareness of issues related to consumer protection and privacy rights within the background screening industry. Founded in 2003, NAPBS was established to represent the interests of companies offering employment and tenant background screening services.

There are a number of important reasons why pre-employment background checks are important. Probably the most critical reason is that because about 10% of the job applicants you interview have criminal records, a pre-employment screening can preempt dangerous, potentially violent incidents in your business.

Second, studies have shown that about 40% of every resume you review contains material lies or omissions about the applicant’s work and personal history such as education, past employment or overall qualifications. Furthermore, if a person is inclined to lie on their resume, simple reference checking won’t identify the problem. A job applicant who has no compunction about professional dishonesty will make sure that any references listed will give a glowing report, most of which will be bogus as well.

The bottom line—literally—is that thorough pre-employment screening is a good investment because the process will ultimately serve to reduce overall costs. Lawsuits stemming from employee actions, theft or embezzlement, high turnover, bad publicity, and lost customers become very expensive very quickly. Pre-employment screening is sound business investment that makes perfect business sense.

By now it should be pretty clear that the issue isn’t whether or not to conduct pre-employment screening—it’s something that every business, large or small, needs to do. The real issue is how to do it.

Many small companies—even some larger ones, for that matter—rely solely on Internet-based background checking services. Some businesses add a credit check as well, for good measure. Unfortunately, this approach leaves a lot to be desired, and if not executed properly—within the letter of the law—can create an entirely new set of problems.

The fact is that there are many different kinds of pre-employment screens that can be conducted. Basic employment screens would include SSN verification and trace, a criminal records search, driving records, employment verification, and perhaps a drug test. Expanded pre-employment screening would typically include a civil records search, education verification, and a thorough, professionally conducted reference check. For highly specialized employment, an international criminal check would be conducted, along with a review of bankruptcy records, professional licensing, Inspector General reports and a credit check.

If it starts to sound a little bit complex, it is. Determining what pre-employment screens to conduct, and then actually performing them requires a high level of professional expertise. A basic scan using an online service is of little or no use, particularly if you are not trained or experienced at deciphering the data you receive.

But there is another reason why pre-employment screening is best left to the professionals as well—potential legal liability. Unless you know the laws regarding pre-employment screening and follow them explicitly, you put yourself at risk for extensive legal—and financial—liability.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is the main statute that governs pre-employment screening. For example, the FCRA requires that prospective and active employees must expressly authorize a pre-employment screen, and that they must be given notice before any derogatory information is used against them. Furthermore, the pre-employment screening report may only be used for a permissible purpose.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the federal agency that also has had its eye on pre-employment screening as of late. The EEOC has set forth laws that provide very specific guidelines as to how pre-employment screening data is used, and under what circumstances it can be obtained. In addition, there are a myriad of individual state laws that govern the pre-employment screening process as well.

Another thing to consider is that a pre-employment background screening report is only the first step in the process. It is now considered a human resources best practice to conduct periodic background checks on employees who are already working for the company. The reason of course is that people change over time and knowing that a background screen can be conducted at any time simply serves to keep honest people honest.

There is no question that pre-employment screening and ongoing background checking should be an integral part of your hiring and employee management process. Think of it as a sort of insurance policy—making a nominal investment up front and spending a little bit more along the way can avert huge losses and catastrophic events down the road.