How Far Should a Job Screening Go? 675
SlashSquatch asks: "My sister is getting screened for a programming position with a financial firm. I was alarmed to hear she'll be getting fingerprinted at the Sheriff's Office as part of the screening process. Instantly I conjure up scenes of frame-ups and corporate scandals. I want to know, should this raise a flag? Would you submit to fingerprinting, blood tests and who knows what else (financial, genetic code, and so forth) for a programming position?"
It's a financial institution (Score:4, Insightful)
Way to extreme (Score:2, Insightful)
But its going to far when they require you to have your finger prints recorded, I would personally turn down a job which required my finger prints to be recorded, the only time in this industry you would need your finger print recorded is for access to resources using finger print scanners.
Ummmm.... No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Taking a gene profile is going waaaaay over the top. They can kiss my lilly-white butt.
"programming position" (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes,yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ummmm.... No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bipolar in Seattle (Score:2, Insightful)
As to mental stability, you are in a special circumstance here, but most employers aren't going out of their way to hire people who are very likely going to just go missing for weeks at a time. You state you have been on your meds continually for one year but don't state how old you are. If you are 18-20 or so, then good for you, keep it up. If you are 40 then that means half your life you have bounced off and on them and will likely continue to do so, at least from an employer's perspective.
Oh, and not many employers will go out of their way to hire a law breaking employee, of course that depends on the job and the law, but I personally wouldn't want my grandma at a nursing home where a nurse had a long history of substance abuse arrests, have my taxes done by someone who was guilty of tax evasion, or hire a policeman guilty of battery in the past.
Re:Guess I wouldn't get a job (Score:2, Insightful)
Based on the rest of your post, you have probably reinforced the idea that those tests are the greatest thing since sliced bread. A bipolar who goes on spending binges and gulps drugs like water? Yeah, that's someone I'd take a gander on for a financial programming job.
Re:Ummmm.... No. (Score:5, Insightful)
The first poster (Anonymous Coward) stated it very well, she is working in a Financial Institution. I think the security on those is similar if not better (or worst? depending on POV) than the goverment agencies (CIA, FBI, DOD, ETC) because the information being played with there is *very* sensitive.
Also, I do not know what is so fucking outrageous about finger prints, my father has a ranch, and when I was younger we went every saturday to pay the pawns theyr week salary, and my dad kept a book for the payments (ala spreadsheet). Some of the pawns didn't know how to read/write, hence my father used their fingerprint as a signature to acknowledge payment. That is a common practice to autenticate people in poor countries. And it is way better thana lousy signature.
Again agreeing with the AC, I think that, if she does not want to be deeply screened then Finance is not an industry where she should get a job. She might preffer going to Google, Amazon or any standard software shop...
Re:if it requires latex gloves (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great point! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Way to extreme (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, fingerprint recognition would be a way to verify that applicants are not using an alias/fake ID with a criminal record to get access to sensitive information.
As you have said, you have a criminal record, so would probably be passed over for employment by financial institutions, and government jobs where you might have access to sensitive information. I am not saying that ALL jobs are like this, but if honesty is critical to a job function, anyone who has a criminal record would probably get an automatic fail during job screening.
Re:Sometimes,yes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ummmm.... No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Way to extreme (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bipolar in Seattle (Score:3, Insightful)
no you haven't. Most employers right now pull a credit report on you before they interview. you can not stop that from happening. I personally think it is wrong, but companies have evolved to the point that they treat all employees and potential employees like slaves and feel justified to not even interview you because you were 4 days late paying your electric bill last month.
I am not joking, Management position applications at the last corperation I was at were ordered by credit score not by experience or education.
Re:if it requires latex gloves (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:if it requires latex gloves (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ummmm.... No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Resisting fingerprinting is kind of pointless. If someone at the workplace wants your fingerprints, they could easily lift them from one of the hundreds of things you touch at the office every day.
Your fingerprints are not a secret.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:4, Insightful)
then I think that a fingerprint check is totally justified.
And what happens to them after the 'check' is over? They doubtless sit on file somewhere.
The Gov't can't force you to turn over fingerprints or DNA without probable cause but your employer can force you to do it to get a job and then let it sit in a Gov't database for the rest of your life? And people meekly surrender to this!
Freedom is dead.
Re:if it requires latex gloves (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, I have no objection to a criminal background check. I'd argue that if someone is a drug addict and is smart enough to have avoided conviction, then that person is smart enough to do the job I'm hiring them for. (The odds of someone having a drug problem to the point where it would affect their job performance without having run into trouble with the law at some point are pretty low, as far as I know.) I object to drug testing as a screening method for potential hires, as I'm ostensibly being hired for the product of my brain and my hands, not the product of my kidneys, and therefore said product is none of their business. If there's a problem with performance or security, then you could argue for a test if it's warranted (read: there's some legal due process before the request for a sample can be made.)
Personally, if a drug test is part of the hiring requirements, at the very least it's going to cost my potential employer more to hire me (since they're buying the right to invade my privacy.)
As much as I hate to bring the law into this, IMHO there should be SOME sort of regulation regarding who can and can't be legally required to provide a sample for a drug test. I mean seriously, do we care if the guy who stocks the shelves at CVS likes to smoke a joint once in a while? (That shows up for up to 30 days.)
With great power comes great responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Both 'real' jobs that I've had (ie, since college) have required fingerprinting. (One for a secret security clearance, the other to work at NASA on sensitive-but-unclassified projects). I have no fear because I am an ethical individual and my prints will never cross their paths again.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:5, Insightful)
First, if you don't have the job yet, they're not your employer. Second, I don't think you have a very clear idea of what force is. Third, if you don't like the requirements of the job, go work for a dot-com. Nobody is forcing you to work for a bank.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
I am quite comfortable with an institution retaining fingerprints of anyone who handles "my" money.
"Your" money isn't directly at risk. Ever hear of the FDIC or NCUA?
Sorry if you don't like it, but some jobs necessitate this level of scrunity, as others have mentioned.
There are ways to check to see if somebody has a criminal past without retaining their fingerprints indefinitely.
With all due respect to your "freedom is dead" stance
It is dead. Moving past this issue why are drug tests allowed? Why is it any of my employers (or potential employer) business if I use drugs or not on my own time? Did you know that most drug tests don't even test for the presence of the drug? They check for the metabolites of the drug. So you aren't even stoned if you test positive.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
Worry more about the employment contract (Score:4, Insightful)
Worry more about what the employment contract says. Some of them are feudal slavery. If the employer is going to own everything that you code at any time of the day or night, whether at the office or at home, you won't be doing any open-source contributing and any personal projects that you create might not be yours without a fight involving lawyers.
You should be aware of what you are signing away when you accept a job.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, for one thing sometimes it is nice to know if your employees are currently breaking the law.
You do know that it is against the law to take drugs, even on your own time, right?
For another thing, if I do not test you for drugs and then you (run over someone with the company car),(cause an industrial accident),(stub someone's toe) and then test postive for drugs at the police station, I am held negligent and my livelihood (and the business I've spent years creating) is destroyed.
Sorry, you don't have the right to put me at financial risk. You don't have a right to a job - you have to work for those...
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:4, Insightful)
This entire point is moot anyway - please reference the following:
What is the Purpose of FDIC Deposit Insurance?
The FDIC protects depositors' funds in the unlikely event of the financial failure of their bank or institution.
http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/deposit/faqs
which has nothing to do with inside bank fraud.
Likewise, the NCUA also has insurance to ward off the possibility of branch failure, not inside jobs.
While it can be assumed that the banks/credit unions would attempt to make good on any funds stolen, this is not a guarantee, and the money to replenish the missing funds would come from somewhere, correct?
There are indeed ways to check criminal backgrounds without fingerprints. For some sensitive jobs, this is an added step in the verification process, and rightly so IMO. Do you have a problem with police officers or teachers being subjected to this as well? All of these positions have a grave responsibility with the potential for ripe abuse that can harm others. While fingerprinting and the matching of such against the NCIC does not guard against the possibility of future crimes, it does aid in an informed decision of whether the job applicant is of good enough character to hold the sensitive position in question (forgive the run on sentence).
Why you brought drugs into this discussion is beyond me. Perhaps you should stop taking them before you post again.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
They get you the chance to see if she embezzled at her last job. Somebody with a conviction for any white-collar crime shouldn't work as a programmer for a financial institution. Checking fingerprints is the most reliable way of performing a criminal background check.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you Score - don't like it, drop out of the running for the job. There are a ton of jobs that don't require this.
RonB
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
So is it justified there? To force me to submit to fingerprinting just to exercise my civil right to self defense under the second amendment?
What, they need to make sure criminals dont have access to a concealed weapon permit (legally)?
Normally I am against statist things like this, but in the instance of critical positons, an NCIC and fingerprint check are reasonable precautions. And unlike your suppositions, the prints are NOT retained after checking.
By the way, do you over exaggerate often?
I didnt find any tubercular bums, or other such things at the police station. It was more like an office with lots of normal people there (reporting a stolen watch, etc), and police officers working in the cubicles - the criminals tend to be kept in the back, you know, where the jail cells are. You've been watching way too much television.
People working with fingerprint DB screened? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are assuming that the programmers, admins, etc working with the fingerprint database have been screened.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
Gotta stand up for your ideals or nobody will (Score:3, Insightful)
The woman at the temp agency was floored. And the guy sitting across from me, who had just signed the form, was also stunned. It was as if they'd never seen anyone stand up for their civil rights before.
Needless to say, I never got any calls from this agency. And I was never disappointed about it. Another temp agency called me repeatedly, though. (They didn't require any ridiculous civil rights violations.)
Don't Panic... (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, a bank deals with sensitive information (like your account information, transactions, etc.). They have a legal responsibility to verify as reasonably as possible that a person they want to hire doesn't have a criminal record that would impact the bank adversely if they hired them. Normally, that means any fraud, check-kiting, embezzlement, ...financial stuff. Of course, some places are very conservative and want to see if there is a criminal record (beyond old speeding/traffic tickets).
I have seen places do fingerprinting (some in-house, some through the local police nearby), background checks (ranging from very limited to-for clearances-all out), drug tests (use the cup). I used to work in government security and they were really concerned about blackmail, bankruptcy, debts, gambling, infidelity/homosexuality, etc.--they didn't want employees to be blackmailed into doing nasty things.
I've recently done some work for a big multinational bank and had to do the fingerprinting (they did it in-house), and take the drug test (outsourced to a lab). I kidded with the person lining up the work that "I'm glad I studied hard for the drug test" (;-).
Typically, access to sensitive information requires more than a simple check of references. But if you are doing straight programming for a dot.com and they want to do stuff that doesn't make sense, don't bother applying.
In this case, the banks have a standard of background/fingerprint checks and drug testing as per Federal Law (US). It also limits their liability a bit if it turns out the employee does something bad. And with the Patriot Act and other laws recently enacted, banks have to screen employees a bit more thoroughly than McDonald's...
Think of it this way: what kind of person do you want handling your accounts? For other lines of work, you can ask a similar question.
I shudder to think about pilots, bus drivers, train operators, etc. operating equipment that I ride in without having drug testing. I'll exclude NYC cabbies because you first have to be crazy to drive in NYC, and you probably need strong medication (licit or otherwise) to do it.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
While I think every company has the right to ensure that employees do not consume drugs while at work, I cannot possibly see why they should even be allowed to dictate your behaviour when you are not at work.
There is an element of double standards here too - boozy working lunches are ok, a spliff to relax after work is verboten.
If they could devise a test that evaluated whether or not a person had recently consumed drugs while they were at work I would not object as much.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
The purpose of this is to keep them on file in-case. This way they can check fingerprints on files, cash, etc if something happens. You get a card from the B/D, you take it to the local police station where you live, they fingerprint you(they're professionals), then take it back to work where they'll file it.
It's not that big of a deal.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
They can't just ask; a criminal won't care about lying. (It's like anti-gun laws... the only people they hurt are people who don't break the law. If a guy wants a gun to hold up a convenience store, he won't care whether the gun is legal or not.) They have to check against something.
So they're doing exactly what you want them to do - except you haven't realized that in order to do so, they have to verify you have not lost this right.
And before you say "well just let them check my ID", you know as well as any that IDs can be faked. Fingerprints, on the other hand, are very difficult to fake - short of burning them off. On top of that, I'm willing to bet there are plenty of fingerprints in police databases from crime scenes that have not been matched to anyone, so they're not just checking for your criminal record, they're making sure you're not just good enough to not get caught.
I don't get why people are so afraid of people seeing their fingerprints. What are they going to do, plant them at a crime scene? Now *that's* paranoid.
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a financial institution (Score:1, Insightful)