You are claiming that as an employer you do not contact the previous employers of your prospective employee?
I am not claiming that. I am claiming that I don't contact them to get gossip about them. I contact them to confirm employment; nothing more.
Your organization does no background check whatsoever on a prospective employee?
Nothing extensive. The application asks if they have criminal convictions; we run a criminal background check. If it matches, I usually ask about the circumstances of the conviction. Not every conviction is grounds for me to write a candidate off.
(We do have a particularly sensitive couple of positions, which we are required to do a more extensive background check.)
You just take what they write on their resume/application (whatever your process is) as gospel?
No. I interview them and ask them specific questions about jobs they've done. I posit on-the-job scenarios and see how they respond. It's pretty easy to see who actually has the experience and knowledge to do the job.
Ok, sure, I'm not going to accuse you of lying to try to make a point. But that's not common.
You are right. I am not a common employer. I don't care about petty crimes that the candidate is forthcoming about. I don't judge them based on mistakes in the past. I only care about two things: Can they do the job? Do they have a good work history -no unexplained gaps in employment, no job-hopping, etc.
And we've already been over why one has to examine credibility if there is no evidence. Over and over, with examples from law, society, and personal lives. But you claim to also make no attempt to determine how credible anyone is when they tell you they didn't break your weed-eater it was already broken, or when they need to borrow money, etc.
If you never asses credibility as an employer, when lending your goods or money, or when attempting to determine something when you have no direct evidence either way, then I doubt anyone will be able to convince you that credibility matters.
I never said that credibility doesn't matter. I said it isn't a good tool in assessing sexual harassment claims, lending money to relatives, etc. And yeah, it can seem like I'm a trusting sort. But I'm not really. I set our policies to avoid having my staff or me make credibility assessments . If a patient says that they didn't bring their wallet to pay their copay, our policy is that we will reschedule the visit until such time as they do bring their wallet. No need to assess credibilty. It's amazing how many wallets turn up in the car.
I'd venture that if you are telling the truth, you're being ripped off a lot and likely have people working for you who are not qualified to do their jobs. I believe you're in the medical field, so I certainly hope having unqualified people working for you hasn't caused a catastrophe yet.
Not at all. Sure, I've hired some duds and some people who proved to be unreliable. I had one employee steal from the till. But the systems are in place to catch such things; it would be hard to get away with. Most of the people I've hired are long term employees, only moving on when a spouse gets relocated or some other major life change. But most of them have been in my employ for as long as I've been an employer.
Most people are good people, even if they've made mistakes. That's my experience and the way I see things. It works. When they actually screw up, that's when I need to act.
Most women have experienced harassment. Even women who have made mistakes. I see no reason to discount their stories simply because they've done bad things in their life or made questionable decisions. Their "credibility" is a poor tool to use. We don't act on their stories all the time (or shouldn't, anyway) because there is no evidence or it's much too late to do anything. This is not an excuse to attack the woman.
