Always ask to see the background check details if you're the hiring manager (you should have the rights to see that despite what HR might tell you). Could be just a personal issue an HR employee might have with a former colleague. Or discrimination-based (happens).
One day one of the feared internal security team who had caught him years ago was in the building and met him and freaked out - our centre mangers politely told him to f off when he demanded that we fire the guy.
Socially Adept Frenchman: 1 Human Resources: 0
If you're referring to private reference checks, of the type that would surface "personal issues people might have with formal colleagues", you're not entitled to anything whatsoever.
If you're a hiring manager in an organization where HR handles background checks, you personally as the hiring manager are entitled to nothing. I would venture further that it's inappropriate for HR to provide criminal/credit background check information to hiring managers.
You mean in any kind of practical or legal sense or in your personal opinion?
I see this happen all the time and am not aware of any thing barring this in the U.S.
Think about the two extremes. If a startup of a few people run a background check there is no HR dept so the CEO/hiring manager is seeing it.
On the other hand if the hiring manager is the CEO at an F500 company trying to hire a handpicked rockstar exec and a background check pops there no way that person will be rejected only on the word of HR without understanding what the issue is and the context around it.
Somewhere in the middle of those extremes companies may have policies to address the situation, but I don't see how any blanket statement can be made here.
* Candidates are entitled to copies of background/credit reports used to make adverse decisions against them, under the FCRA.
* Candidates are only entitled to the specific document, collected under the FCRA, that was used to make the adverse decision.
* Reference checks --- calls to previous employers and coworkers --- are not governed by the FCRA or, as far as I know, any other law. Candidates are absolutely not entitled to any information about reference checks, but a candidate that "flunks" a reference check might be told so when they're refused a job. Or they might not.
* No law entitles hiring managers to any documentation whatsoever.
Only the last point I made was one of opinion, but I think it's a widely held and pretty common sense opinion:
It is terribly inappropriate for HR to share background check documentation with hiring managers. Companies that employ background checks should have simple, static rules, like "no previously undisclosed felonies" or "no violations relevant to the job", that are evaluated by HR.
It's already a grave violation of candidate privacy to do these kinds of checks in the first place (which is why they have to collect special permission from candidates to do them at all!). It's negligent to then pass that information around the org chart to help others in the company read tea leaves from them.
My opinion here is informed by experience working with companies that do background checks, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there are fucked up companies where HR passes copies of credit and background reports to other employees.
True, but in general, it is likely that whatever a background check turns up on someone, such that they're unemployable, is probably available to anyone with a web browser and some time on their hands. The people in the org who want to satisfy their curiosity or sense of self importance as to why someone didn't meet the company's standards can probably find a way to do it.
The reason one really shouldn't what to see this info at all if they can help it (and should have a trustworthy HR office handle this stuff) is that pretty much everything done in the hiring process can be used later on in court. The safest possible position for a hiring manager if the question comes up is "HR indicated the candidate did not pass our background check and so we moved on." And only an idiot wants to answer questions later on about with whom they shared damaging information about a candidate.
To be clear I don't think a lot of this stuff is right. It drives me nuts to see someone ace technical interviews and then not be hired for some insignificant drug related issue. How do companies not realize this probably hurts them more than the candidate? A lot of tech companies don't do drug tests at all, I'm guessing because they've figured this part out.
If you are trying to hire a talented employee, and HR says no way, you better demand they justify it. It's your job to advocate for people on your team, even when they haven't come on board yet. Otherwise no one will.
It's far to easy for HR to auto-reject because of hard-wired criteria, they have no incentive to challenge their own rules for a good candidate.
I know a kid who once was a chip-runner at a casino. The way the job worked was he took cash/chips from poker players and went to the cage to get them chips/cash. He got paid minimum wage plus tips, and was on the hook if he got shorted. But the plus was he'd get $1 tip for each transaction, sometimes more.
But this kid optimized the whole job. He hustled like crazy, minimized cage trips by carrying 7 or 8 racks at a time, and even took optimal routes through the poker room. Watching him work was inspiring, the kid was so driven.
He was making a ton of money, far more than the other chip-runners, and someone ended up complaining. So the room decided chip-runners should pool all tips together. He quit in a rage the next day and chip-running service in the room became awful, the remaining chip-runners now saunter at their own pace, carry a single rack at a time and minimize their risk by slowly counting everything three times.
A couple years later the kid got busted for selling weed out of his house. He ended up serving a few years in prison. He's going to now fail any HR background check/screen. I'd still hire him in a fucking second, and expect him to rapidly work his way up from any entry level role.
I've had my own background checks in the past and no one has shared them with me. Speaking to HR, unless there is a negative item on your record they aren't required to.
o_O
Why would you assume you couldn't?
As soon as individual managers want to make those decisions for themselves, it becomes much harder to refute claims of discrimination.
"Your honor, my client, the recently released child rapist with an iffy work record, is suing because BigCorp says they normally don't hire felons, but a few years ago BigCorp made an exception for a felon who sold marijuana, got his college degree in prison, then after he was released worked at non-profits helping the poor while getting an advanced degree in computer technology and writing several highly regarded academic papers on improving user interfaces for the disabled. That's not fair!"
The specific facts matter, and HR should be fired if they have blanket polices that ignore them. HR needs to serve the business, not the other way round.