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Getting Good Help These Days
When contracting for personal services, there’s no such thing as too careful
Business New Haven
01/22/2007
by Melissa Nicefaro
When it comes to hiring employees for your business, the process is fairly cut-and-dried. You post a notice that you’ve got an open position, you review resumes and narrow the field of applicants down to a handful. Then you meet them in person and hire the one you like best.
But when it comes time to hire people to perform personal, not business services – in your yard, on your house, for your children – the playing field changes.
How do you know you’re getting good help? Bad help can be really bad.
According to private investigator Robert Artus, “The reality is that you are bringing someone into your home and exposing them to you life, your home and your family – and that falls at the extreme end in terms of doing thorough background checks.
“You should make it your paramount importance to do a background check – but it costs money,” Artus says. “If you want it done properly, you have to spend the money.”
Like many things in life, it does come down to money and a thorough background check can cost dearly. The price of a background check can range from a $49.95 Internet special upwards to $10,000 for a professional investigative firm. The cost depends on where a person has lived and just how far an investigator has to go to fill in all the blanks. If the person under scrutiny has lived in Connecticut his or her entire life, for example, the cost will be considerably less than if the subject has lived at multiple locations around the country or the world.
Background checks typically include any criminal or civil offenses, but also look into driving backgrounds and whether there is any pending civil litigation such as domestic abuse.
“If you are a lower or middle-income person, you are not going to want to spend the money that you probably should on a background check,” says Artus, who is principal of the New Haven-based ArtusGroup, LLC. However, “If you’re high-income, there is absolutely no excuse for you to let anyone near your children or your home without a very thorough background check.”
Spending the money doesn’t always yield a domestic professional with a sparkling record working in your home. If a check turns up an offense that obviates hiring the person, you’re out ten grand – and still have nobody to watch your kids.
“As much as you like that person, if that person has a criminal history with any sort of violence, you simply can’t let your gut take over,” says Artus. “You have to go with the facts. They’re black and white.”
When considering hiring a person to work in your home – whether a nanny, housekeeper, groundskeeper, chef or driver – transparency, stability and predictability, in terms of no litigation or adverse public record, is vital. Certain grey areas – such as divorce, tainted credit or bankruptcy – ought also be considered, though they may not be a deal-breaker.
A private investigator’s background check starts with the Internet, which leads to on-site field investigation. An investigator’s certification also entitles him to purchase databases that are available only to those licensed in the field.
In an era fraught with increasing concerns about personal security, scrutiny is a two-way street. And increasingly many service providers find it necessary to screen potential clients.
Personal chef Lynne Forte of Trumbull starts the client-screening process on the Internet. Forte discovered her own forte in organic food about three years ago. Today she’ll go into a prospective client’s home and conduct an interview, assess dietary and food preferences and then create a menu of meals for one week. She shops and then cooks, cools and packages the meals in the client’s home, but not before she finds out exactly who is seeking her services.
Forte has between six and eight clients in Fairfield County that she cooks for on a regular basis and is not currently looking for more clients. For the most part, they are well-to-do people of significant means. She cooks for one couple, both in their 90s, and the rest are a combination of single people, couples and families.
“There was a time before I started business when I had a concern about going into people’s homes, but that is absolutely not the case now,” she explains. “My business is in poultry, fish, vegetarian and healthy food. I don’t work with beef or pork, so that screens out your ‘Mr. Everyday.’ My clients come from a different layer of society.”
Forte’s clients typically find her on the Internet, too, either through the Hire-a-Chef service or a Google search for a personal chef in her part of the state.
“When you talk with client on the phone, you in an instant know who you’re talking to,” Forte explains. She recounts a phone call she received from a man who said he was a doctor from Texas, new to the area and looking for a personal chef.
“Because it was a man calling, and I’d be cooking for only him and potentially a nurse, I took his name and looked him up on the Web,” says Forte. “I found that he was in fact a research doctor from Texas.
“I verify facts about people,” Forte says. “I listen to what they say, and certainly would be on the lookout for anything that seemed off. I would not show up at just anyone’s house. You have to be careful about that, especially in a city.”
Dick Tice, director of the Connecticut Grounds Keepers Association, says that when it comes to hiring a landscaper or groundskeeper, the issues don’t involve security as much as ensuring that the person you’re hiring knows what they’re doing. He says it the responsibility of individual contractors to ensure that they hire people who are not going to be a threat in at a client’s residence.
Tice recommends meeting a landscaper face-to-face before hiring. “As basic as it sounds, make sure that you are comfortable with this person,” he says. “Make sure that these individuals have any licenses or certifications necessary.”
Landscapers must be registered as home-improvement contractors with the state’s Department of Consumer Protection. Possession of such licenses can be verified by homeowners at www.dcpaccess.state.ct.us/DCPPublic/LicenseLookup.asp.
In addition, anyone doing pesticide work of any kind – indoor, outdoor, or crack and crevice control – must be licensed by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
“Make sure they have those licenses,” says Tice. “And if they’re the least bit skeptical, make them show them to you or verify them yourself.”
Though a license doesn’t ensure a contractor is using the chemicals correctly, it does add a layer of security that they know what they’re doing.
Tice strongly suggests getting a written contract or proposal with very specific verbiage that gives the homeowner the right to change his mind within 72 hours before a landscaper does any work. If using a landscaper that plans to apply pesticide, Tice says the homeowner should get a detailed list of the pesticides being used.
Background checks are not industry standard in landscaping, but individual employers may opt to have such checks performed on their help.
“When I ran a landscaping business many years ago, I never ran a background check unless I had a strong inkling that something was wrong,” says Tice. “They may be more prevalent today, though. The turnover in a landscaper’s help is phenomenal.
“As soon as someone gets good at it, they go off to do it on their own,” he adds. With so many people passing through a business, it can be costly to perform a background check on every person you hire. But that’s not to say homeowners can’t do it themselves.
“Once someone’s on your property, who the heck knows what might happen? This is true for a landscaper or a nanny,” Tice says.
Artus concurs: “The fact is, if you’re having someone in your home at any level, do something [to check his or her background]. Find out who that person is. Check references – not just the references they give you, but ask around. If they’re coming into your home and looking after your children, know who they are.”
