By Brian Ward-Hall and Farryn Robins
By performing proper background checks on potential employees, Canadian camps are not only following strong business practices, but also increasing the safety and security of both its campers and staff.
Among the many important tasks a camp owner and/or director performs throughout the year is hiring staff members.
For many camps, returning staff is key to not only its success, but also to ensuring the safety and security of both campers and fellow staff. However, camps, inevitably, have to hire new staff. With this reality comes many important questions: How do I know whom to hire? Do I hire former campers? Do I hire a person based on his or her résumé or interview skills? And even when I find that applicant with the sought-after résumé and impeccably delivered interview, how do I know that I am making the right hiring decision? How do I know that a candidate’s past performance at his or her previous employer was credible?
Candidates no doubt feel the pressure to deliver a good performance, even if this performance consists of subtle exaggerations on their résumé or in their interview. In fact, according to industry statistics, approximately 30 per cent of people embellish their résumé claims, while one in 10 make false claims regarding their education.
In an environment, like camp, where hiring honest and reliable employees is crucial to creating a safe and positive experience for campers, having confidence in hiring decisions is mandatory.
To secure this confidence many camp owners and directors choose to outsource the pre-employment process, so instead of trusting résumé claims or internally conducted reference checks, they hire objective and impartial third parties to conduct criminal record checks, investigative reference interviews, credit bureau inquiries, education verifications and employment history checks.
Outsourcing these checks not only removes poor candidates from the hiring pool, but also ensures that desirable candidates are not lost to another employer because of time wasted during the pre-employment process. Instead of thumbing through a résumé and chasing references, directors can fax a candidate’s information and signed consent to a third party and receive a full background report on that candidate within a few days.
To really ensure camp directors are hiring the type of people they say they are, camps can ask third-party service providers to conduct several types of background checks on individuals. In a recent sample of 60,000 background checks, a criminal record check revealed that five per cent of candidates had serious “red flags,” or warning signs, associated with their application. When coupled with a credit check, this percentage increased to 15 per cent, and when joined by reference checks, the percentage jumped to 45 per cent.
Simon Adams, president of the Canadian Camping Association/Association des camps du Canada (CCA/ACC), states that, “to best assess the suitability of seasonal summer camp staff and volunteers the CCA/ACC strongly recommends that camps adhere to their provincial accreditation standards and require all employees and volunteers be screened through an annual application process, interview, reference checks (2), criminal record search and training program.”
For camps, the best approach to hiring new staff and conducting background checks is to tailor the screening process based on the position the candidate applied for. For example, in addition to the criminal record check and reference interviews, it is recommended that candidates who have applied for a job as a cook, lifeguard or first-aid attendant be subject to an education or credential verification check. Furthermore, on top of the previous checks listed, it is recommended that individuals who have applied for a senior position at a camp (e.g., program director) undergo a credit inquiry and employment history verification.
Conducting a number of tailored checks on candidates ensures the credibility of each candidate’s application. Ensuring this credibility through third-party outsourcing not only creates an environment with integrity and reliability, but also causes staff attrition rates to drop and the quality of employees to rise.
In any given hiring pool, résumés may be embellished, interviews may be staged and camp directors may spend hours tracking references that might not disclose these inconsistencies. However, conducting background checks through outsourcing will provide confidence that the candidates left to choose from are credible, honest and possibly the next best counsellor at your camp!
Brian Ward-Hall is the director of sales at BackCheck (www.backcheck.ca), a pro-vider of pre-employment background checks, including criminal record and investigative reference checks, credit inquiries and education/credential verifications.
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