Due Diligence and "Lifestyle Assessments" on Potential New Hires by Skilled Private Investigators

www.beaudietl.com

By John W. Cutter

With the recession having claimed nearly 4 ½ million jobs since December 2007 the few companies still in good enough financial shape to hire find themselves in the proverbial catbird seat.

Put out a want ad in these dire economic times and just sit back and watch the flood of impressive resumes come washing in. But are those impressive credentials credible? Sometimes desperate times make people do desperate things. With unemployment reaching a 26-year high and looking like it´s only going to get worse before it gets better, some who find themselves jobless are willing to do whatever it takes to get off the dole.

If that means fudging the resume a little bit so suddenly you are proficient in something you don´t really know the first thing about, so be it. If it means pumping up the job descriptions to make yourself look like a chief instead of just an Indian, well whatever. Even if you really didn´t attain that graduate degree or take that specialized training or win that high-achiever company award, hey, the mortgage is due and the kids have to eat, right? So you roll the dice and hope that company in the catbird seat doesn´t do the required due diligence.

And you´d be amazed at how many of them don´t do anything more than read a resume and maybe, maybe, call a few references or former employers before making the hire. But research shows that such a lax approach could be very costly.

According to the top-selling book, Who: The ´A´ Method for Hiring, authors Geoff Smart and Randy Street found that "the average hiring mistake costs (the company) fifteen times an employee´s base salary in hard costs and productivity loss." In other words, if a poor choice of a new employee is hired on at $100,000 annually it costs the company $1.5 million - a year! And the authors also found that managers typically make hiring mistakes an astounding 50 percent of the time.

The due diligence professionals at Beau Dietl & Associates (BDA) can help your company make the right choice whether your hiring a security guard or the Chief Executive Officer. Using a variety of databases, surveillance techinques and good old fashioned shoe leather, the skilled private investigators at BDA (www.beaudietl.com) can discreetly get you the answers that most of the HR people from your prospective employee´s past companies either won´t provide or aren´t allowed to reveal.

Depending on the job importance level the candidate under consideration, we can conduct a full, soup-to-nuts investigation that includes a "lifestyle assessment." This pre-employment background check includes financial and credit checks by our accounting experts, property and asset searches, a criminal background check and a complete history of all types of litigation involving the individual and his/her past companies. We also will attempt to determine if your potential new hire has any destructive personal habits, such as drug, alcohol or gambling addiction, that might hinder future job performance.

In one instance, we found that a man who was being considered for a Chief Operating Officer job at a company that dealt in children´s products, making it doubly important that they maintain their kid-friendly image, had pleaded guilty to assaulting a 14-year-old child. The man received probation and the case was hushed up but his hire potentially could have been very embarrassing for this company that ultimately passed on him. The "P.S." to this story was that this company´s chief rival then hired the man as its Chief Executive Officer. Word of this CEO´s criminal past hasn´t gotten out yet but at least now it´s a potential PR disaster for our client´s rival, not our client.

In another case, we found out another candidate under consideration for a top executive job had filed a succession of lawsuits against past employers. When we outlined some of the cases for our client they decided that this apparently sue-happy candidate wasn´t worth the risk.

The authors of Who: The ´A´ Method for Hiring says the reason why so many companies make so many bad hiring choices is that many managers employ what they have termed "voodoo hiring" techniques. They even give names to them like the "Art Critic" who hires on gut instinct and "the sponge" who feels it enough to spend a lot of time with a potential candidate but never asks the tough, probing questions that should be answered.

Well, here at BDA we don´t rely on voodoo techniques to get our answers. Our professional investigators will thoroughly yet discreetly vet any prospective hire and get you the information that could save your company millions of dollars per year per employee. For a free consultation with our internationally recognized firm please contact Beau Dietl & Associates at www.beaudietl.com or 1-800-777-9366.