News

Berg Consulting Group Acts as Intermediary in Sale of S.O. Screening

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Aug. 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Berg Consulting Group is proud to announce their intermediary work for the sale of “S.O. Screening” a pre-employment screening company. Both the owner of “S.O. Screening” and the owner of the acquiring company are extremely happy with the transaction.  Interestingly enough, the owner of this decidedly small CRA wanted to […]

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Bruce’s PBSA 2023 Annual Conference Report

PBSA 2023 Annual Conference Grapevine, TX Sep 10-12, 2023   What a great conference.  Well attended with a highly spirited group of participants and so many new faces.  What a joy.  Attendance totaled 822 of which 767 were in person with 259 sponsor attendees and 508 were regular attendees and speakers. The remaining 55 attendees […]

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Bruce’s PBSA Mid-Year 2023 Conference Report

PBSA 2023 Mid-Year Conference Arlington, VA, April 16-19, 2023   What a great conference.  Well attended with a highly spirited group of participants and so many new faces.  What a joy.  Attendance totaled 418 (down a tick from last year) of which 147 were sponsor attendees (up a tick) with 35 exhibitors (up) and 271 […]

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PBSA Annual Conference Report 2022

  PBSA 2022 Annual Conference Aurora, CO      September 2022   While this was a dual conference, both in-person and virtual, the vast majority (85%) were in-person.  Virtual is good, but in-person is so much better.  The in-person attendance numbers were very strong with the numbers reaching 799.  Best I could determine less than 1% were […]

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Bruce’s Mid-Year 2022 PBSA Conference Report

  NAPBS 2022 Mid-Year Conference Arlington, VA, April 10-12, 2022     What a great conference.  Well attended with a highly spirited group of participants at this in-person only event.  Attendance totaled 415 of which 125 were sponsor attendees with 30 exhibitors and 290 were regular attendees. These numbers were slightly off compared to the […]

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PBSA Annual Conference Report 2021

  Anaheim CA.  September 12-14, 2021   This was a dual conference, both in-person and virtual.  The in-person attendance numbers were much less than in the past but still 391 in-person and 255 virtual for a total of over 600.  And while the quantity was not the highest ever, it still was excellent.   There were […]

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M&A Insight #3 For Background Screeners

Nugget #3: I am writing to share a gift with you. HINDSIGHT The ONE Thing You Can Do TODAY to Ensure Business Success Tomorrow When the time comes to sell your business will you be totally satisfied/happy or frustrated/regretful? Much of what I do with M&A transactions is to ensure owners are set up for success […]

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Podcast featuring Bruce Berg

Bruce had the chance to catch up with Tim Santoni of Santoni Backgrounds. Tim invited Bruce to join the guest spot on the Background Screening Tips and Tech podcast. The two cover a variety of pressing business issues impacting CRAs right now. Topics such as: profitability, the future of business and the Berg’s Background Business […]

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Berg Consulting Group Celebrates 20 Years in Business

Two Decades of Service, Growth and Visionary Business Solutions lead to milestone West Palm Beach, Florida: Berg Consulting Group, the renowned consulting firm dedicated to the background screening industry, has reached an exciting milestone as the business celebrates 20 years of consulting and helping background screening businesses achieve their goals. Thanks to the company’s experienced […]

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NAPBS 2019 Annual Conference Report

BRUCE’S SNAPSHOT 2019 Professional Background Screening Association Annual Conference San Antonio, TX September 8-10, 2019 Well, the BIG NEWS at this year’s professional background screening conference was the association name and branding change from NAPBS to PBSA: Professional Background Screening Association. The change was made with great fanfare, to respond to the borderless nature of […]

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NAPBS 2019 Mid-Year Conference Report

BRUCE’S SNAPSHOT 2019 NAPBS Mid-Year Legislative and Regulatory Conference Washington D.C. March 24-26, 2019 Update: 6/24/19. See correction under CRA News This year’s conference was well attended with another new record 472 attendees compared to last year’s 442. The number of exhibitors grew from 36 to 42. NAPBS conference attendees are an active community eager […]

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Background Screening Customer Service: A Big Opportunity

Recently, HR Executive Magazine mentioned customer service. The informative publication published survey results that can help background screeners. The numbers in the January/February 2019 issue are viewable  “90% of survey respondents say their customer-facing staff are their best organizational asset for shaping the customer experience, though 69% admit their front line employees currently find it […]

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3 Reasons Why Your Background Screening Business Needs a Detailed P&L Statement

By: Evan Zatt Background Screening business owners must analyze and control their bottom line to achieve success. If you are like many companies, you only have the basics: one Revenue line, one Cost of Goods (COGS) line, Expenses, Net Profits.  Simply put, it’s not enough. It’s time to add critical details to your P&L and […]

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Background Check Guidelines

Human Resources professionals have a lot to manage. One priority is legal compliance. Is your HR department up to date with the background check guidelines? The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination but did you know that the EEOC continually reviews criminal record screening policies of employers? Read this article […]

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Largest Civil Penalty To Date Assessed to Background Screening Business

Did you hear about a tenant screener who recently settled for $3,000,000 with the FTC? The FTC alleged that the screener conducted faulty screenings.  See https://bit.ly/2Ar30iq This tenant screener allegedly did not use best practices during the time in question. Are you selling criminal reports from so-called national databases? Are you selling criminal reports based on […]

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NAPBS 2018 Mid-Year Conference Report

BRUCE’S SNAPSHOT 2018 NAPBS Mid-Year Legislative and Regulatory Conference Washington D.C. April 15-18, 2018 This year’s conference was very well attended with 442 attendees compared to last year’s 430. Notable was the increase of background screening industry suppliers in the exhibit hall from 30 to 36 in number over 2017. The exhibit hall was sold out […]

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NAPBS 2016 Mid-Year Legislative and Regulatory Conference

2016 NAPBS Mid-Year Legislative and Regulatory Conference Washington D.C. April 3-6, 2016   The conference officially kicked off on Sunday night with an opening ceremony followed by the exhibit floor open to all for hors d’oeuvres and drinks.  A full house of exhibitors again supported NAPBS and attendance was up from 341 last year to 368.  […]

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NAPBS 2015 Annual Conference

2015 NAPBS Annual Conference September 20-22, 2015, Austin, Texas   Somehow these conferences keep getting better and better. The attendance numbers were at an all-time record. Year     Total Attendees    Companies Attending     Exhibitor Attendees   # of Exhibitors 2008           642                             261                         170                        49 2009           525                             224                         146                       65 2010           508                             213                         […]

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NAPBS 2015 Mid-Year Legislative and Regulatory Conference

2015 NAPBS Mid-Year Legislative and Regulatory Conference The conference officially kicked off on Sunday night with an opening ceremony followed by the exhibit floor open to all for hors d’oeuvres and drinks.  Forty exhibitors againsupported NAPBS this year, similar to the same sold-out number as the last mid-year.  Attendance was up from last year’s 285 (185 attendees […]

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NAPBS 2014 Legislative and Regulatory Conference

2014 NAPBS Legislative and Regulatory Conference Arlington, VA, April 6-9, 2014 This report is no longer the “Mid-year” or the “Fly-in” report; it is now renamed as above. Why? Because it has been reorganized to be just that. At this conference there were no breakout sessions, no FCRA 101 training or similar education sessions. Everyone […]

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Getting Ready for Selling Your Company

Getting Ready for Selling Your Company Here are some things you can do to maximize your value and minimize your pain when you decide to sell. While you may not be ready today to sell your company, if selling is even in your long-term goals, now is the time to get ready. 1. Begin immediately […]

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What is Superior Customer Service?

What is Superior Customer Service? Last issue we talked growth and how to do that. In this issue we need to concentrate on the importance of superior customer service if you want to grow. What is superior customer service? The simple answer is that customer service resides in your customer’s expectations. Remember not all customers […]

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Sales Growth. Are You Getting Your Share?

Sales Growth. Are You Getting Your Share? As a background checking company, you should be growing at a real nice pace. A 10% growth rate in a lot of industries would be praised. In our industry, it is an outright failure. A large company doing $50,000,000 in background checks might only grow at 10% while […]

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NAPBS 2017 Mid-Year Conference Report

BRUCE’S SNAPSHOT 2017 Mid-Year Legislative and Regulatory Conference Washington D.C. March 19-22, 2017 The conference officially began on Sunday night with an opening ceremony by accomplished Chairperson Dawn Standerwick, who gave an uplifting welcome to kick things off. Notable in her message was the significant progress being made on critical state issues, including getting full […]

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NAPBS 2017 Fall Conference Report

NAPBS 2017 Annual Conference (aka In-Spite-of-Hurricane Irma) Orlando, Florida September 17-19, 2017 The attendance numbers were at an all-time record reaching 817. This level of attendance demonstrates the greatness and value of these conferences. I talked to several first time attendees and they told me that after this experience, they will never miss another. It […]

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Society for Human Resource Management Conference, 2015

Society for Human Resource Management 2015 Las Vegas, NV There were 40+ exhibitors providing background screening in some shape or form with 30 limiting their business primarily to background screens.  Ten of these were new exhibitors (did not exhibit last year), seven did not return from last year and one was acquired.  Below is a […]

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SHRM 2014 Annual Conference

SHRM 2014 Annual Conference With 620 exhibiting companies, the SHRM eXpo is the largest trade show dedicated to human resource management products and services and is always a centerpiece of the SHRM Annual Conference. There were 40+ exhibitors selling background screening; 32 limited their business primarily to background screens. I apologize up front for this […]

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NAPBS 2014 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2014 Annual Conference, Denver, Colorado October 2014   This conference was even better than the last with Dean Carras and Adam Townsend and their committee of volunteers along with our association management group (IMI) on top of everything. While the attendance didn’t match the last couple of years, it was still good:  People Stuff: […]

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NAPBS 2013 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2013 Annual Conference, Phoenix, Arizona September 2013   NAPBS membership is up to 790.  Almost 800!  Strength through numbers!  Did you know that 13% are non-USA based members? This conference was the best yet, celebrating ten years.  Dean Carras and his committee of volunteers along with our association management group (IMI) were on top […]

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NAPBS 2013 Mid-Year Conference

NAPBS 2013 Mid-Year Conference Arlington, Virginia April 14-17, 2013   The total count of attendees at this mid-year conference was 364, up from 342 at the last mid-year in 2011 and from 294 in 2010 and 249 in 2009.   A great turnout for this mid-year that combined the traditional conference with the traditional “fly-in” designed […]

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SHRM 2012 Annual Conference

SHRM 2012 Annual Conference With more than 650 exhibiting companies, the SHRM Expo is the largest trade show dedicated to human resource management products and services and is always a centerpiece of the SHRM Annual Conference. There were 45+ exhibitors selling background screening and 31 of those limited their business primarily to background screens. The […]

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NAPBS 2012 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2012 Annual Conference Nashville, Tennessee March 15-17, 2012   Let me start by saying that if you do not attend these conferences you are truly missing out. You can really gain a tremendous amount from going, participating, meeting others in the industry, learning from the formal sessions, the bull sessions and the bar sessions. […]

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SHRM 2011 Annual Conference

SHRM 2011 Annual Conference With more than 650 exhibiting companies, the SHRM expo is the largest trade show dedicated to human resource management products and services and is always a centerpiece of the SHRM Annual Conference. There were 40 exhibitors related to background screening and 30 of those had their total concentration in background screens. […]

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NAPBS 2011 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2011 Annual Conference Denver, Colorado March 20-23, 2011 The attendance at the conference was up 12% from last year. Not bad at all. Here are the details: Total Companies Exhibitor Year Attendees Attending Attendees # of Exhibitors 2008 642 261 170 49 2009 525 224 146 65 2010 508 213 156 56 2011 572 […]

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ASIS 2011 Conference

ASIS 2011 Conference   I personally attended the conference this year. I really wanted to see what was and was not going on. The attendance at this conference was consistent with previous years the reported number of about 20,000,although they would not share the numbers of paid attendance vs. the thousands of “attendees” who were […]

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NAPBS 2010 Mid Year Meeting Recap

NAPBS 2010 Mid Year Meeting Recap Torrey Pines, California October 9-12, 2010 by Evan Zatt The total count of attendees at this mid-year conference was 294. That is up from 249 attendees at last year’s mid-year conference in Atlanta. For those of you who like percentages, this year’s attendance was up 18%. The conference kicked […]

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SHRM 2010 Annual Conference

SHRM 2010 Annual Conference San Diego, CA I spent a few days visiting a majority of the pre-employment screening companies at this year’s SHRM show inSan Diego, CA. I received a lot of feedback from business owners, operations managers, salespeople and marketing directors and, from what I gathered, everyone was very happy to leave 2009 […]

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NAPBS 2010 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2010 Annual Conference San Antonio, Texas March 7-10, 2010 The attendance at the conference was about the same as last year. Not bad at all. Here are the details:   Total Companies Exhibitor # of Year  Attendees Attending Attendees Exhibitors 2008 642 261 170 49 2009 525 224 146 65 2010 508 213 156 […]

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Pre-Employment Screeners 2009 Conference

Pre-Employment Screeners 2009 Conference 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 […]

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SHRM 2009 Annual Conference

SHRM 2009 Annual Conference New Orleans, LA As expected, attendance this year at the conference was significantly off from 2008. SHRM reported attendance of only 6,800 vs. 12,000 for 2008, off 44% (does this sound similar to your year-to-year sales volume drop off?). It’s interesting that they also reported 3200 exhibitor personnel this year, equating […]

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NAPBS 2009 Fall Conference

NAPBS 2009 Fall Conference October 2009   The attendance at the conference was actually up 1% from last year to 255 this year (163 attendees and 92 exhibitor personnel/attendees). I thought this was the best run, best – organized, best educational session mid-year conference yet. Mike Pachata and Don Owens took us down the learning […]

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NAPBS 2009 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2009 Annual Conference St. Louis, Missouri April 2009   I think the quality, content and organization of this year’s conference again surpassed last year. The conference committee, headed by Mike Pachata and Don Owens did an outstanding job. The attendance at the conference was down about 20% this year, but no surprise given the […]

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ASIS 2009 Conference

ASIS 2009 Conference   We did not attend the conference this year, so the information you will see here has come from our very generous “on site” reporters, who have chosen to remain anonymous. We thank them very much for their valuable input. The attendance at this conference was off again this year. The reported […]

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Pre-Employment Screeners 2008 Conference

Pre-Employment Screeners 2008 Conference Congratulations to Steve Brownstein and Phyllis Nadel of The Background Investigator for anothersuperb conference. Everyone in attendance or exhibiting that I asked, said while they missed the typicalhigher number of attendees, it was a very worthwhile conference from all aspects: Networking, educationalsessions, hotel, location and exhibitors. So if the quality was […]

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SHRM 2008 Annual Conference

SHRM 2008 Annual Conference Attendance was actually down a bit this year from a record 15,000 attendees in 2007 to a reported13,500,but still a great crowd and, as reported, by one exhibitor, 20-25% of the leads they were getting were qualified decision makers. The number of pre-employment screening companies exhibiting was off a bit from […]

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NAPBS 2008 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2008 Annual Conference New Orleans, Louisiana April 2008   The attendance at the conference grew by 13% over last year to a whopping 689 attendees, with over 100 first timers. The quality, content and organization of this year’s conference were way beyond what I called last year as “Another bang up year for NAPBS […]

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ASIS 2008 Conference

ASIS 2008 Conference   The attendance at this conference was off this year. We are still waiting on the official number from ASIS, but I am pretty sure they will report fewer than the 24,000 attendees for 2007 and even fewer than the22,000 reported for 2006. [The final count announced by ASIS on 10/3 was […]

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SHRM 2007 Annual Conference

SHRM 2007 Annual Conference Attendance was up again this year, to a record 15,000 attendees and another 7000 or so exhibitors, staff and others. Note: there are over 225,000 SHRM members. The number of pre-employment screening companies exhibiting was up about 10 to 55. It really seemed that there were more background checking companies than […]

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NAPBS 2007 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2007 Annual Conference Austin, Texas March 2007   I was not able to attend this year’s conference as I had unfortunately already long ago booked a three-week trip to Africa [not unfortunate I went to Africa-it was a SUPER trip, but unfortunate because I missed NAPBS]. I had booked it to end before April, […]

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ASIS 2007 Conference

ASIS 2007 Conference   Once again the attendance at this conference was strong with 24,000 reported attendees, up 2000 from 2006.It sure seemed like there were more with all the people moving into and out of the convention center. And,thankfully, this year there seemed to be a change whereby the temperature on the exhibit floor […]

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SHRM 2006 Annual Conference

SHRM 2006 Annual Conference Attendance was up about 10% to almost 14,000. About the same number of pre-employment screening companies exhibited as last year, about 45. The exhibiters I spoke with were very excited about the quantity and quality of the leads. Of course, these are only “leads.” The real work in landing these accounts […]

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Pre-Employment Screeners 2006 Conference

Pre-Employment Screeners 2006 Conference   Congratulations to Steve Brownstein and Phyllis Nadel of The Background Investigator for another superb conference. Attendance was 401, up substantially from 2005, with more than two dozen vendors exhibiting their services to the industry and a slate of interesting, professional presenters keying in on topics extremely important to the attendees. […]

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NAPBS 2006 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2006 Annual Conference Nashville, Tennessee April 2006   Wow. All I can say is Wow! This can only be described as a super conference. Can you believe the attendance was about 500 people? 500! This is simply amazing when you consider NAPBS is only 3+ years old. NAPBS now has 548 member companies and […]

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ASIS 2006 Conference

ASIS 2006 Conference   Another great trade show. 34,000 attendees reported. While the exhibits at ASIS are more hardware than services, the employment screening industry was again well represented, with 18 Retail BI companies, 4companies offering databases (crim, address and other), one drug testing, one pre-employment assessments company and one MIA. This year more than […]

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SHRM 2005 Annual Conference

SHRM 2005 Annual Conference At the conference there were about 45 different pre-employment screening companies exhibiting. Compared to last year, eight new background-checking companies exhibited and9 others chose not to repeat. Attendance was off a little, but 12,000 is still a lot of people and more importantly, the exhibiters I spoke with seemed very pleased […]

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Pre-Employment Screeners 2005 Conference

Pre-Employment Screeners 2005 Conference   Congratulations to Steve Brownstein and Phyllis Nadel of The Background Investigator for the great conference they put on this past week. They had about 300 in attendance with more than 2 dozen vendors exhibiting their services to the industry and a slate of interesting, professional presenters keying in on topics […]

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NAPBS 2005 Annual Conference

NAPBS 2005 Annual Conference San Antonio, Texas April 2005   Would you believe these stats for the Second Conference? • Over 400 in attendance–last year was 226. • 225 different companies represented. • 26 exhibitors. • Total membership of NAPBS is now over 400 vs. 268 a year ago. Thanks to Mike Sankey and Catherine […]

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ASIS 2005 Conference

ASIS 2005 Conference I attended the Annual Meeting of First Advantage on Tuesday, and the ASIS show on Wednesday. Some highlights at FADV: The acquisition of the Credit Information Group (CIG) by FADV from parent First American was approved. Arnand Nallathambi, president of First American’s Credit Information Group, has assumed the responsibility of president of […]

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Pre-Employment Screeners 2004 Conference

Pre-Employment Screeners 2004 Conference   The third annual 2004 Pre-Employment Screeners Conference sponsored by The Background Investigator.   Steven Brownstein and Phyllis Nadel put on an even better conference than last year. The attendance was up about 30% to 302 people and 25 exhibitors. The speakers were good and the networking was keeping everyone very […]

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NAPBS 2004 Annual Conference

NAPBS Annual Conference Scottsdale, Arizona March 2004 Would you believe these stats for the first conference? 226 attendees representing 175 different companies with 21 vendors exhibiting. Total membership of NAPBS is now at 268 with a goal to reach 500by the end of 2004. Frankly, I was surprised and overjoyed at the tremendous enthusiasm generated […]

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ASIS 2004 Conference

ASIS 2004 Conference   We have just returned from the Annual Trade show for the American Society for Industrial Security in Dallas. Once again, this was a huge show with over 20,000 in attendance and a huge trade floor. There were 27 background screening companies exhibiting and while the traffic never seemed real heavy, no […]

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Pre-Employment Screeners 2003 Conference

Pre-Employment Screeners 2003 Conference   The second annual 2003 Pre-Employment Screeners Conference sponsored by The Background Investigator. Steven Brownstein and Phyllis Nadel put on an even better conference than last year. The attendance was up about 50 percent to about 235 people. The speakers were good and the networking was keeping everyone very busy. Even […]

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