Bad Practice Alert: Backcheck.net

Recently, I've gotten a couple of notices from an outfit called Backcheck.net.  They are a division of something called Checkwell Decision Corporation. They have concerncheck.net and exitcheck.net.  Back in an airplane so no links, sorry.

Consider how this process works:

First, I get this email (names, etc, redacted, this privacy thing going around):

"Hello Rick Segal,

BackCheck has been contracted by [] Inc. to conduct a pre-employment reference check on [], who has provided us with your name as a reference. A member of our HR Interviewing team will be calling you within the next 24 hours to request that you answer a few questions about []. This step is vital to []’s potential employment with [], and we greatly appreciate your assistance.

We respect that you are busy and may not be available when we call.  As a result, we would like request that you contact us at your earliest convenience.  Please call us at 1-866-xxx-xxxx or 604-xxx-xxxx.

Thank you in advance for your assistance in completing a reference for []."

I'm not going to pick on the 'we would like request' because I ain't perfect with grammar, spelling, etc, but I'm just saying..

Here's the suck part. I'm massively busy and while I love these two people, would hire these two people, recommended these two people, this is just a friction heavy way to close the loop on getting 15 minutes of my time.

This is why I'm counting on Tungle to hunt down companies like this and fix this. "Dear Rick, we know you are busy, please click here to pick a time that works for you and we will call."  And, lord, how hard is it to set up an IVR to do this. Please tell us why you like this person, press pound when done with this question. Press one if you'd hire this person again, etc, etc. 

Lesson for you? Friction free, folks, friction free.

Opportunity?  It seems to me that somebody could go all Guy "12,000 dollar web company" Kawasaki, Open Source, Web 2.0, Y-Combinator on these Backcheck people and kick their bureaucratically inefficient butts up into a mainframe drive pack. 

(I get this way when I'm in a middle seat.)

Bonus observation: Here's why search isn't finished yet.  The reference above to Guy will never come up in a search engine today because of the blurb in the middle of the first and last name.  Solve that problem, you're the next Google.  It's about analyzing the sentence, etc, blaah blaah.

Comments

[Ummm]

"A member of our HR Interviewing team will be calling you within the next 24 hours to request that you answer a few questions about Christopher"

Let's be a little more careful blogging, shall we?

[Rick Segal]

oops. Thought I got em all. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Ryan Fox]

I don't understand the bit about a blurb in the middle of the first and last name. I re-read your post thrice, and didn't see anything that seemed to fit.

[Rick Segal]

Ryan,
If you were to search "Guy Kawasaki" in Google (or others), the post wouldn't come up because of the "$12,000 web company" comment in between his first and last name. My point is that some future search engine will take the whole sentence and recognize he (Guy Kawasaki)is part of the sentence and a relevant search result.

thanks for stopping by

[Gerald Nunn]

Maybe I'm missing something but is this search feature really going to kick Google's ass though, seems like an incremental improvement to me? After all, the problem is only if you quote the name, searching for Guy Kawasaki without quotes brings up the post just fine. For example:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=8ns&as_q=Guy+Kawasaki&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fricksegal.typepad.com&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

[Rick Segal]

Hi Gerald,

Besides be in a cranky middle seat, I was making the broader point about semantic search. Probably could have done better.

Thanks for stopping by.

>R<

[Brooks Moses]

Rick, I'm curious -- why is it that having them call you (with you picking a time window) is much more convenient and friction-free than you calling them back? One way, they're going to interrupt something you're doing; the other, you get to pick an exact time that you talk to them.

I'm particularly curious because I sort of also feel like having to call someone is more of a pain, but I can't figure out why!

Maybe it's that we automatically assume that calling someone means "call and wade through a long messy phone tree and a lot of muzak while on hold before getting to actually talk to them"?

[Rick Segal]

Brooks,
The problem is/was twofold. First, they called and were not offering me a chance to pick a time slot. The voice mail that was left said "Hi, this is susie, call me back when you can" or something close.

The larger point was that the whole process was not particularly efficient. She even said, you can fill out a form online but never told me when/where/how, etc.

Finally, I got 4 pieces of email, two for the wrong person (I didn't know them).

Thanks for stopping by.

>R<

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