Employers, more than ever before, need to protect themselves against accidents and crimes committed by their employees. With negligent hiring, lawsuits, training costs, workplace violence and theft on the rise, pre-employment screening as well as taking the correct pre-employment screening steps are no longer an option, but rather a necessity for businesses.

Steven R Cordes, a former emergency dispatch agency director in Kane County Illinois, was sentenced on September 10th to 6 months in prison and an additional 30 months of probation for conducting illegal background checks.

Cordes stated he was acting in the best interest of his girlfriend who wanted to know more about the young men her teenage daughter was dating and associating with. So, without consent, or legal authorization, he rifled through private police databases and ran extensive criminal background searches (and at at least one known drivers license search) on the boyfriends daughter and several friends.

The highly illegal and unauthorized searches were undertaken between 2006 and 2008 when Cordes was employed as agency director for the 911 dispatch center Quadcomm.

Steven Cordes intentions were obviously far from any kind of malicious intent. If anything the illegal searches were down out of concern and love for someone he felt close to.
But it still doesn’t absolve the breach of professional and legal conduct that were integral parts of his position. Nor does it dismiss the grievous breach of privacy against several individuals…teenage individuals no less!

Despite the best of intentions, rules and protocol need to be obeyed with regards to individual privacy no matter who may be in question. We might think we have the right to walk around rules and regs when we feel someone deserves to have their past laid bare for all to see but those legal barriers are there for a reason.

How might it be the other way around if YOUR background was exposed without your consent or authorization? Pretty invasive huh? Suddenly, you feel pretty good there are those safeguards there.

Steven Corde has a long time to think about his actions and will no doubt emerge from this sentence a little more respectful of the proper guidelines one is to follow when it comes to a background check.

My advice to older males in this situation is that if you don’t like who you teenage daughter is dating; a little old-fashion living room intimidation might do the trick. Illegal background checks don’t really seem to be worth it. But if a background check is truly warranted, have it done legally!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.