Paying for Employment Verifications

MrCreosote

I've heard about this for a while but encountered it for the first time yesterday, so I'm sorry if this is old news.
A large bank in the Chicago area has outsourced its employment verifications. If one wants to hire one of their former employees and verify their previous employment, one is only given a 1-900 telephone number. One's charge for the call is $3.50 per minute and it takes about 4 minutes for one to get the verification. It's completely automated and everything is repeated back, very slowly, at $3.50 per minute.
What does one do?
1) Does one just get used to it?
2) State in one's ads that former employees of this particular bank need not apply?
3) Require applicants, upon hire, to repay any costs incurred in their employment verification?
4) Require these particular applicants to provide a W-2 in order to verify previous employment?
5) Cancel one's own account with this bank in disgust?

SMace

This is the very reason people have negative feelings towards banks. Do they have depts. devoted to dreaming up new service charges? I wouldn't be surprised if they start charging you to enter a bank.

I would not think that you could exclude applicants that worked at the bank. It could result in disparate impact claims. I also don't think it would be good to ask the applicant to reimburse you. It could cause bad feeling right from the start. You probably just need to chalk this up as a cost of doing business.

I would cancel my acct with the bank and let the highest level of HR in the organization know why.

Stephen

HRsage

My company unfornutely also had this program with the 1-900 #. Now we finally changed to a 1-800, but it's still a pain for people to call it. It's common in the customer service fields like banks and retail. Try to get in good with someone in HR with the different banks and other institutions and see if they can give some info over the phone. When I get calls from employers all I can do is give them the dates of employment and the position held. Any other info has to be done through the phone number.
Don't punish the prospective EE for their old company's policy. It's part of doing business.
My .02 cents, keep the change.

Don D

If those with banking skills meet your needs, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot to exclude everybody who worked there. But, I wouldn't be at all concerned about disparate impact if you did exclude them. If your policy were such that you did not pay for verifications, the EEOC would have to accept that. They have not yet thought of a way to require an employer to pay for such checks. They may force you, through conciliation, to run newspaper ads and use other resources to recruit, but this one would be a stretch.

I'll bet that if your company's corporate accounts are there, a letter from your CEO to the bank president would reverse this for you. Of all your available options, it seems the only sensible one is to bite the bullet rather than penetrate your foot with it.