The Big Picture

What should you know about a person before you hire them? For many remodelers, the answer includes much more than just details about their skills and experience.

“Clients literally give us the keys to their house,” says Thomas Turnage, president of the Turnage Co. in Jacksonville, Fla. “I need people I can trust with the keys to someone's home.”

Turnage uses criminal background checks, credit checks, and drug testing (or at least the threat of it) to ensure that, at least, he doesn't have to worry about crew members behaving badly on site.

“You probably don't need [a background check] 95 times out of 100,” Turnage says, “but the 5 times when you really need it, it's hugely significant.”

To handle potential-employee screening, Turnage retains a private investigator. He pays anywhere from $75 to $125, depending on where the applicant is from — a search for out-of-state records costs more — for a thorough check of criminal history, residence history, financial history, and driving records. The latter can be telling, Turnage says. “A guy with a good driving record is usually a calm, stable person. If a guy can't get a Florida driver's license, that's usually a bad sign.”

Roy Bryhn, owner of Bryhn Construction in Flemington, N.J., conducts background checks using a human resource services provider. He says that telling prospective employees up front about the screening process often reveals as much as the screening itself. Applicants sometimes confess about their past before the screening, hoping to mitigate the damage of compromising information.

“Usually, if they want the job,” Bryhn says, “people will tell you what's going to show up on their record — even the stuff that doesn't show up.”

Often, Turnage says, the private investigator doesn't find any one deal-breaking piece of information, but a pattern of behavior indicative of an unstable personality.

“You can kind of tell when you have a hothead — getting in fights, spousal abuse,” Turnage says. “If you have any of that stuff in your background, I'm probably not going to take a chance [and hire you] unless there's overwhelming evidence that you've made some kind of change.”

What's acceptable and what's not, however, isn't always clear. Trouble long past, after all, may be just that. Turnage says he often relies on the experience of his private investigator to help him make difficult judgments.

“There are no hard-and-fast rules, no black and white,” Bryhn says. “[A clean record] doesn't guarantee anything. Some people just don't get caught.” Still, he concludes, “The more information you have, the better decisions you can make.”