One upside to this is that we do very thorough background checks and this weeds out a lot of candidates. I do feel bad for those who might have had a blemish on their past because it pretty much keeps them from having an opportunity to work in our company - even though they may be upstanding people today.
I told my children when they were growing up to stay away from drugs and stay out of trouble. All it takes is one mistake to basically ruin your employment prospects.
It seems to me that the bigger the federal government gets, the bigger municipal, state and corporate governments get and that’s why we now have HR departments, staffing services recruiting and its management, when there used to be just one or two people working in the Personnel Departments of small businesses and municipalities.
I believe it helps no one to have HR Departments be so empowered. They will most likely never know when they have said no to the wrong person. The “human capital” they miss out on and the people they misjudge as being good candidates has to be a significant factor in why such businesses fail to achieve their goals for quality and continuous improvement. Zero tolerance policies are a great way for corporations to shoot themselves in the foot. When you hear them complain how they “can’t find enough good people”, you know there’s a problem in HR and not necessarily with their pool of potential candidates. I believe there is a pandemic of the wrong people being scrutinized and not just in matters pertaining to employment.