Fingerprinting | Job Candidate with a Criminal Record? Pt. 2

Fingerprinting | Results Validated

The Harvard-Amherst study isn’t alone in its assessment.

Canadian Big Data firm Evolv crunched numbers and found that “criminals can make better employees than anyone else.”

The firm calculated that employees with criminal backgrounds are 1 to 1.5 percent more productive on the job than people without criminal records.

Such productivity “could result in tens of millions in profit and loss gain” said the company.

Why the Surprising Results?

Evolv speculated that perhaps employees with records may feel a sense of loyalty and/or gratitude to a business that would see beyond their mistakes and provide them with an opportunity.

Is that enough to persuade prospective employers?

Evolv’s CEO Max Simkoff said, “…I tell them their own data is showing this—if they want to save $10 million a year, they should make the change. But what they do with the data is ultimately up to them.”

Sociologist Jennifer Lundquist, one of the authors of the Harvard-Amherst paper, speculatedthat people with criminal records may want to “go the extra mile” for businesses offering them a chance to get beyond their pasts.

“Our main argument is that the ‘whole person’ criteria is something we think employers should explore as a possibility.”

Otherwise, employers “may be losing out by just banning ex-felons altogether who turn out to be pretty good employees when given that chance—and when properly screened.”

“The screening process clearly works, there’s no question,” Lundquist noted. “But I also suspect there may be something else going on here, which is the interesting social question.”

She hypothesizes that criminal record holders may do better than those without a record and outperform their peers because they want to pay back an employer – in this case, the military – that offered them a second chance.

Another explanation may lay in the fact that, in serving in the military, they were removed from an environment that may have tempted or influenced them to break the law.

The military also offers a highly-disciplined hierarchy that is so responsibility-focused it may keep individuals from misbehaving. -HireRight