If you’ve been in the job market recently, you’ll have discovered a disturbing trend. A trend that seems to be growing and will seemingly become the norm sooner or later. More and more employers have begun insisting on an employee background checks. Now, looking in on the outside, it doesn’t seem completely unreasonable. An employer invests a lot in their employee and it can be argued that they deserve to know who or what they’re investing into. Take for example, the saga of the last CEO of Mozilla who recently resigned over the furore regarding his donation to Prop 8, a anti-gay marriage bill in America.
On the other hand, the question arises, how much snooping into your private life by your potential employee is acceptable? David Lazarus, a columnist from LA Times, recently answered the question stating that while employers can demand some employee background checks, there are certain limitations, for example, they cannot access your credit files without your written approval. Unfortunately, there are ways they can get around even these flimsy laws. No Private Detective worth his salt will ever turn down a gig as seemingly simple as an employee background checks for a company. What a Private Detective sees in this gig is a source of steady income, a comparatively easy job where the information is more or less laid out in front of them and why wouldn’t a Private Detective accept a job like that. Companies can’t be blamed either because since the advent of social media, it seems like the sins of the employee becomes the sins of the employer. Every employer would like to insure against any kind of bad publicity and if all that takes is hiring a good Private Detective to do his job to the best of his abilities then so be it.
In the end, as David Lazarus points out, everyone needs to figure out their own line in the sand and measure how important is one job to you if that job requires you give up nearly all of your privacy. Having a Private Detective check your Criminal record would be acceptable, having to hand over your social media passwords to the Private Detective or your employee on the other hand? Not so much.