Hello, this is Steve Ivester. I appreciate you spending 5minutes with the mess manager.
Today I want to talk about background checks and drug testing. When business owners start their businesses, a million things are thrown at them. When they get their first employee, they're entering into a whole new world that they never bargained on. Many owners, they can interview someone for 30 minutes to an hour because they really don't have a lot of time and get everything they need to employ them. Well, interviewing is a whole new world we'll talk about later, but right now I want to talk about backgrounds. You know, background checks are relatively inexpensive and so is drug testing. And the cost, however, the cost for not doing them is very expensive. It's amazing what a background check would tell you about someone. Let me back up and tell you that you must first offer the candidate the job before doing the background check. And the candidate has to approve it. You can't do this without their knowledge. Very few people will tell you about their peppered past. The ones that do could be keepers. When the results come back and they're not stellar, most owners will ask what do I do now? It's really a great opportunity to have an honest conversation and I actually call it the right conversation. You'll hear me say this in many of our talks going forward. When I'm in this situation, I ask myself why was I not able to get this info out of this candidate when I was interviewing them? One of my clients did not do a background check, they actually just refused to do them. And they employed someone for a full year. And one of his clients found out that the employee was on the sex offenders list. And he had absolutely no clue. He thought he knew this person. He lost his client and he lost several employees. After all was said and done how much do you think all of this cost him? Well, guess what? The next new hire he had was the start of doing background checks. Now let's talk about drug testing. One way to get a candidate talk to you about their past and a great interview question is to say during the interview that we do background checks and drug testing. And do you have any issues with that? That one question will open up all sorts of conversations. You never know. Drug testing today is a lot different than it was several years ago. Some clients don't want to test for marijuana. But if this person that you're interviewing might be driving your company vehicle and other employees are riding with them , you better think twice about not testing for THC. I also suggest that you learn what someone's eyes look like when they could be high. That's one reason why you need to get to know your employees. How do they normally look? In fact, I'm going to challenge you. You really need to know all of your employees. Can you write 150 words about all of your employees? If not, then you don't really know who they are and they are so instrumental in the success of your business.