Congratulations to Steve Brownstein and Phyllis Nadel for their NINTH annual conference. If you are not aware, it was this conference where the seeds for NAPBS were planted. Without this conference there may have never been an NAPBS.

Regarding attendance, I have to quote Mike Hovorka (Orangetree) who put it in this way: “This is an intimate group.” There were less than 100 people in attendance, but I have to say, the quality of this conference continues to be very good. Furthermore, as an exhibitor, I had the opportunity to demonstrate our Dexter product (real-time, direct-to-the-court criminal search) to nine people who had not been responding to phone calls and emails. So, the face-to-face time actually led to three accounts signing up and six others being very interested. And the people attending were, for the most part, not the same people we see at the NAPBS conference.

Social and Networking:

The Sunday evening cocktail party was a big hit, as always, with a lot of networking and great conversations. The networking continued in the lobby, the bar and even into the city of Clearwater Beach. Note: the vendor exhibits were not part of this cocktail party because they were going to be open all day Monday and Tuesday so there was time at the cocktail party for the exhibitors to just schmooze and plenty of time over the next two days for the attendees to visit the exhibits. There were plenty of opportunities in the bar over the next three nights to network some more. Some people even made it to the hot tub.

Presentations:

The sessions I was able to attend were mostly well done, informative and germane.

Les Rosen gave another excellent and concise presentation on best practices and legal trends.

Guest speaker Joe Calloway gave a very good presentation on “Becoming a Category of One.”

Another presentation was regarding how to secure your computers and network. They showed how easy it is to break in and take your data, without you even knowing!!

Michelle Stuart gave another great presentation on websites to use while doing investigative work (she also told some great stories from her youth, which I dare not repeat here).

Cheri Homa, from KPMG, talked about the results from her industry survey regarding the state of the market for background screening. Key challenges reported by background screeners include:

Compliance and regulatory changes.

Finding good sales people.

Slow-paying customers.

Strong competition and pricing pressure.

Companies are looking to expand offerings to increase revenue.

8 of 17 companies surveyed said they expect 2011 to be their best year ever.

Les Rosen gave another presentation, this time on the use of Social Media.

Can the employer be sued for negligent hiring if they don’t search social media? There may be some court cases coming on this issue.

Facebook EULA says it cannot be used for commercial purposes.

Sometimes a search returns TMI (race, religion, marital status, age, etc.).

Legal issue. Is off-duty conduct applicable to the job?

Privacy. People still have a reasonable expectation to privacy, even on-line.

What is real and how does this need for verification fit with sec 607b of the FCRA? [Whenever a consumer reporting agency prepares a consumer report it shall follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information concerning the individual about whom the report relates.]

If this is an FCRA search, how would the FCRA apply (e.g. adverse action notice)?

Caution about pretexting (creating a Facebook page that is fake or posting fake information onto an existing Facebook account).

Suggestions:

Tell clients to do their own research.

Do it post offer, pre-hire.

Documented training on what to look for.

Have a well-written job description.

The person doing the search should not be the person making the hiring decision.

Have objective matrices.

Some Key Lessons:

If you are thinking that everything is under control, you aren’t going fast enough.

Capture and use new ideas.

If you are waiting to do something “as soon as I get time,” it will never happen.

Action, Action, Action, Take Action.

You don’t get to the top of the mountain by falling on it (Douglas Henry)

Thanks to all for the “in-the-exhibit-hall” Frisbee fun and to Brownstein and Nadel for truly quality conferences over the past nine years.