Hiring Honest Staff for Your Co-op or Condo: An Expert Tells You How
Nov. 19 , 2010 — It's not just hard finding good help these days. It's hard finding honest help, too. Roughly 75 percent of all employees steal from work in some way, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Seventy-five percent! Granted, this study is heavily weighted toward retail employees, but for co-op boards and condo associations seeking to hire a super, porters, concierges, doormen / doorwomen, on-site bookkeepers, garage attendants, whatever, hiring an honest staff person is something you've got to have a hand in and not just leave to your managing agent. But how?
"Although it may seem complex, one hedge against employee theft and fraud is to redesign the hiring process to help screen for employees who suffer from 'selective integrity,'" says Denis Collins (left), a business environment and public policy Ph.D. and the author of Essentials of Business Ethics. "After an employer fires someone for theft, the natural question he or she asks is, 'How'd we even hire that person?' By changing your hiring practices, you can screen out people who are more likely to steal."
Collins' tips for screening job candidates include:
- Use Ethics-Based Interview Questions
Too many interviewers gloss over questions that test an individual's character. Ask the candidate how he or she responded at a previous job to someone stealing, engaging in sexual harassment or cutting ethical corners. Ask if a superior ever requested that they do something unethical and, if so, how did they react. Even those who are dishonest with their answers can reveal how they feel about ethics in general.
- Obey Legal Ground Rules
While there are many questions the law forbids you to ask job candidates to eliminate discrimination, there are still many questions you can ask. Go over these with your co-op / condo board's attorney before the interview.
- Review Behavioral Information
You can gather behavioral information about job candidates through resumes, reference checks, background checks — including sex-offender registries — and some basic integrity tests that quiz candidates through "what would you do" style situations. Three standard integrity tests come from Vangent's "The Reid Report" and Personnel Selection Inventory (PSI), and The Plotkin Group's Stanton Survey.
- Test Personality Traits
The traits that govern whether an employee is more or less inclined to be dishonest include conscientiousness, organizational citizenship behavior and social dominance. For the first two, you want to see high scores — not so much on the last one. Again, personality tests are widely available to test these traits.
- Other Tests
Some of the most revealing tests are the obvious ones, such as alcohol tests and drug tests. Many candidates may object to these as employment requirements, but in a world in which seven percent of our economy goes up in smoke from employee theft and fraud, co-op and condo boards should balance this fact with the possibility of losing a potentially great employee. That's something each board, in consultation with your professionals, has to decide for itself.
"Fraud and malfeasance at the highest levels of some of the country's largest companies contributed to the 2008 to 2010 recession, and have been a willing assistant in keeping our economy down," Collins says. "It would be interesting if we could have turned the clocks back and run those executives through an ethics-oriented hiring process, and perhaps eliminated some of the fraud and theft that helped level our economy."
On even the limited level of a single co-op / condo building or complex, Collins says, "Taking some very basic steps can help weed out the unethical and dishonest from the talent pool."
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