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8th Annual Pre Employment
Screeners Conference
Clearwater, Florida
November 2009
Well, congratulations
to Steve Brownstein and Phyllis Nadel for their EIGHTH annual conference. Faheem Ebrahim, with Straightline,
did a great job as MC for the entire event.
Like all conferences,
attendance was off a bit this year. On the positive side, the good news was that the people attending were,
in the most part, not the same people we saw at the NAPBS conference. As such, it was a good venue for
exhibitors, at least for us as we continued to get a great response introducing our two new offerings, Dexter (for robot extraction of criminal data from court websites) and Business Expert Webinars.
While the plans to have a simultaneous conference for HR managers at the hotel across
the street had to be postponed, Brownstein reports that he has already committed for next year.
Exhibitor Highlights:
12 Criminal Records/Data Providers (17 last year)
0 Court Researchers (5 last year)
5 Software Platforms/ASPs (6 last year)
1 MVRs (1 last year)
1
Drug TPA (2 last year)
2 Publishers
1 Misc. 1
Consulting Firm
Social and Networking:
The Sunday evening cocktail party was a big hit, as always, with a lot of networking with conversations
afterwards continuing into the lobby, the bar and even into the city of Clearwater Beach. Note: the vendor
exhibits were not part of this cocktail party because they were going to be open all day Monday and Tuesday so there was time
at the cocktail party for the exhibitors to just schmooze and plenty of time over the next two days for the attendees to visit
the exhibits. Monday night, NBD sponsored a big Disco and Karaoke party that went from 9PM until…well, I left at 1am and
it was still going. Many, many, many thanks to NBD. Here is a special report on the
party from my on the site reporters:
What began as a subdued disco party Monday evening evolved into a mirage of talent displays. We
saw limbo, we saw dance-offs, there was Shagging (the dance form, of course!) and even an 80's throwback to breakdancing
as one brave soul "wormed" his way across the dance floor. To our dismay, we witnessed no actual disco dancing. However,
we did confirm our industry is full of emerging American Idol wannabe's. The singing...oh, the singing! From Lindsey and
Eric’s rendition of Snoop Dog's and Dr. Dre's infamous rap to the Brownstein brothers strangely enjoyable dark
duet, the evening was highlighted with lighthearted, fun Karaoke. Our overall rating: we give it a 9! A perfect 10 would have
only been achieved if Bruce Burg remained a constant figure on the dance floor. So nice to know our talents aren't
limited to the screening industry! Courtesy
of Andrea Griffin and Jolene Pritchard, MBI Worldwide
Tuesday night, many gathered in the bar after going out for dinner. We had a lot of laughs and I
am sorry, but the details of such are not appropriate for this publication. J
People News:Bill Bollinger, one
of the founders of NBD is retiring. No word yet on his replacement.
Presentations:The sessions I was able to attend
were mostly well done, informative and germane. And the main speaker, Larry Winget, was very entertaining
and absolutely worth the price of admission all by himself. A couple of his gems: The secret of customer service? Be nice. Most important part of selling? Ask. How do you make leadership work for you? Give them something good to follow.
Take responsibility. Get started now.
Les Rosen gave another
of his expert presentations on how to avoid getting sued in today’s litigious environment. And, more
lawyers are finding our industry a good target. On
Wednesday morning, the third day, Les also gave a great Q&A session where you could get any question answered for free,
in addition to his video presentation he gives to end users.
Cheri Homa, from KPMG
talked about the state of the market for background screening. Her point was that although the industry
has been really hurt by the faltering economy, we should not despair because the economy will come back and hiring will pick
up. She referred to this as “imbedded growth.” Of course, she stressed
that those who will thrive in the recovery are those that got their costs in order and have continued to bring on new clients.
She always gives a good presentation. 10% of background screening companies will have sales increases
in 2009, 44% reduced prices to keep clients, 47% gave significant price reductions to get new business.
Bon Idziak gave an update on HR-XML in which he is deeply involved.
Shabbir
Safdar gave us some great insight into Facebook. It is becoming a marketing and selling tool.
Oscar Marquis talked about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 and its implications.
Other presentations were on International searches, building data repositories in India, the importance
of field researchers and Safe Harbor, and how to protect trade secrets. Thanks again for a quality conference.
I look forward to the 9th and the 10th annual conferences.
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