Avoiding Hiring Pitfalls: The Critical Role of Background Screening

Lee Kantor: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Women In Motion. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Sarah Hope with Vertical Identity. Welcome.

Sarah Hope: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: So excited to learn about Vertical Identity. Tell us a little bit about what you got going on.

Sarah Hope: So Vertical Identity, we are a background screening company. So we do pre-employment screening when you’re going to go hire someone and you want to make sure that they’re going to be a good fit, check references, check criminal history, check where they’ve worked before, check their driving record, basically vet employees before you hire them or even during the time that they’re still hiring – they’re still working for you. That’s what we do, background screening.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Sarah Hope: Oh, my gosh. Years and years ago, before the internet, there was a time where sexual predators, the databases were not connected state to state. So there was no way that you could do a nationwide search. So it was state-driven.

Sarah Hope: So once the internet came out and the court systems were able to start talking to each other, we got into the actually screening of the employees from the employer side. Before that, we were a database warehousing company. So we were basically a SaaS company. We purchased the data from the different states, combined them, and so we were a database to, like, law enforcement, FBI. So you would basically log in with a permissible purpose, of course, and be able to search for information. And we would gather the information from all 50 states and have it all in one place.

Sarah Hope: Now, when the internet came out, that all changed. And that’s when I got into using the same database and other databases because now you have a lot of AI technology coming on that we decided to get into the actual employer side and actually start doing the work and using the same databases.

Sarah Hope: And then, obviously, there’s verification because you can’t just go out and trust an online source like, you know, like using Google to search for someone’s background because it has to be validated. We’re highly regulated by the FCRA, which is the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so we can’t just put anything on a report. Right? You have to confirm that that’s the right information for the right person before you can put it out. It’s the same law that also controls, like, housing and credit. Right? Because basically if we put out a report and it’s not the person or it’s not their crime and they don’t get hired, well, that’s a huge liability, not only on the employer but on our company.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you have a niche or an industry that is your sweet spot, or is this pretty much industry-agnostic?

Sarah Hope: Industry agnostic. We prefer to stay with companies that are under 500 employees just because we are very boutique style and we have, you know, account managers that really know the business and get to know each one of the recruiters and what they want to see on a report and how to run the report. And if they have questions, they can call us. So we’re not really in a position to do really, really big companies. So we like to stay in our niches under 500 employees.

Lee Kantor: Now, what’s the pain that these organizations are coming to you with? Like, how are they solving this problem without your help?

Sarah Hope: So what happens is most of the time they’re coming to me when something bad has happened. We’ve had, you know, situations where someone has found, you know, fentanyl in the bathroom, or there has been like a, you know, some sort of HR issue that someone is complaining about; you know, a person constantly going to HR and they didn’t do a background check, or there’s been some theft. Right?

Sarah Hope: So usually unless there’s a contract that requires background screening, then it’s voluntary. So for the companies that are voluntary, they come to us usually when something’s happened and they’re like, yeah, we’re not going to take this risk anymore.

Sarah Hope: A lot of the other companies that come to us is because they either have – we’re going to be talking about contracts today. And RFP is part of what they’re required to do when they’re being hired for a federal contract.

Sarah Hope: One of the biggest things that I think most people don’t know that I love to talk about, but it’s also causing my own company, is the fact that California has a law that from the record. What does that mean? It means that the database companies that I was referring to earlier do not – or not even allowed after four years to release that information.

Sarah Hope: So you can – even if – we run a background check, we’re based out of Arizona. So let’s say Arizona. We run a background check for a school district for a teacher. And that teacher lived in California and had felonies in California, and the felonies were over four years old, four or five years old, we can run a seven-year or ten-year background check on them, and those felonies will not appear at all. And that’s horrifying. That’s horrifying to me.

Sarah Hope: And, you know, there’s other – there’s really – I think New York and some other states do that too. But that’s one of the things that we need to be really concerned about and we need to be looking at because those are the things that really impact our business and can really come back and haunt us.

Lee Kantor: So the information is available. But those states just say you’re not allowed to go back beyond four years.

Sarah Hope: No, they won’t even release it to us.

Lee Kantor: Oh, so even if it is available, you can’t go through them to get it.

Sarah Hope: So the only way that I have found that you can get it – because I’m also a private investigator in Arizona. So under that license, I can go do a lot of digging in courthouses that are outside of the FCRA. So again, we’re regulated by the FCRA. So the FCRA says that there are certain conditions, things that we have to follow, right, if we’re going to hire this person and not. So we’re not allowed – California isn’t going to release that information. But if I really wanted to know, then you have to actually go to the courthouse in California, figure out where they’ve lived in the last, let’s say, seven to ten years, get an address search, go to the county, and then pull county records at the county. Yeah, it’s really complicated.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you get your work now? Is it something where RFPs are kind of the mode of getting work?

Sarah Hope: Absolutely. You know, since we’ve – next year, we celebrate ten years in business with Vertical Identity. I’m so excited because when we started it, you know, it was – you know, you’re always scared when you start. You’re like, is this going to work? And here we are celebrating ten years. So I’m really excited about that.

Sarah Hope: And one of the things that has been most important to us and in our business, but it was a program like that that you couldn’t have a certain, like certain felonies in order to qualify for benefits. And it was – it ended up being 3000 a month. And I was so excited because that actually got us going in business. And, you know, having a contract for even $3000 a month that’s sustains you. So – and it’s so funny because the first contract that we got, it was like the first RFP that I had ever written, and we won it. And so I thought, oh, this is the –

Lee Kantor: This is easy.

Sarah Hope: This is the easiest thing you can ever do. All I have to do is respond to RFP all day long. Like, this is like taking candy from a child, right? Was I wrong? Because then we started responding to RFPs. And if you’ve ever responded to RFPs, you know you’ll get, like, a one-page RFP or it’s a request for quote, right? And a request for quote is, like, super simple. They ask you a few questions, you answer them, and then you give them pricing. And there’s not a lot of, you know, rigmarole. There’s not a lot of red tape.

Sarah Hope: Well, a request for proposal, it’s usually like, let’s take, for example, the state of Arizona, so any type of public funds or money that’s coming from the government, so like Maricopa County, or if it’s like the sheriff’s office or if it’s any of the school districts and they have to do backgrounds, well, there’s rules. There’s procurement rules on what they have to put out for bid.

Sarah Hope: So typically – don’t quote me on this because I’m going off the top of my head and it’s been a minute. But I think for like the school districts, I think under 50,000, they can put it a year and spend, they can put it out for a quote and over 50,000 they have to put it out for a request for proposal because then they’re required to have at least – with a quote, it’s at least three. They have to initiate three requests. So they have to send it to three potential vendors. Whether those vendors respond or not, it doesn’t matter, but they have to send it to three, and then they get a quote back and they can pick from that quote. Well, with a request for proposal, it’s more formal.

Sarah Hope: And it gets into a lot of detail and they get into asking a lot of questions to, like, how long you’ve been in business, what is your scope of work, how are you going to implement this, what is your team look like? And so, it got very, very difficult for, you know, at that time it was, you know, three or four of us, for us to spend the amount of time required for an RFP to respond to all of these RFPs. It was taking all of my time, and I wasn’t winning any of them. It was awful.

Lee Kantor: But now you’ve kind of figured out a way to leverage generative AI in order to help you, you know, respond to RFPs and win more of them.

Sarah Hope: Oh, my gosh. So I am an AI junkie. It was, you know, over a year ago that I just got obsessed with YouTube and watching everything that’s coming and started to learn all of the things of how AI can help. I got an account with one – one of the first ones got an account with OpenAI and can go, which anyone can get a free account there. So go to openai.com, get a free account and you can chat with the AI and the – and I guess now they’re calling it generative AI.

Sarah Hope: And the generative part is basically that, you know, the AI actually starts to understand based on prompting. And I’ll get into that in a minute. But to understand what you’re working on and who you are as a business and who you are as a person and what you’re working on and can start to think with you, that’s the generative part of the AI and as a result.

Sarah Hope: So now, what we do is – actually, I’ve only started doing this recently because OpenAI allowed attachments to be able to be uploaded, and so it can read these huge PDFs, right? So what happens is, is that, you know, a company, let’s just say Maricopa County. I remember I did an RFP for Maricopa Community Colleges several years ago. We didn’t win it, but it took our team. We were working on it for six weeks, and there were some other really big companies that we’re responding to it, too.

Sarah Hope: I was a little bit over my head, but that was okay. What they do is, is they put it out and they have all of these requirements that you have to meet. There’s all these questions. And if you miss any of the requirements, like if you miss an attachment that you have to sign, they tell you, they’ll immediately disqualify you.

Sarah Hope: So what you can do now is you can take that RFP, you can upload it into OpenAI, have it read it, okay, and then by prompting it – so when you – when I say prompting it just for like in layman’s terms, is you have to get really specific with how you type into the chatbot and talk to the AI. So you have to – you have to tell it who it is.

Sarah Hope: So, an example would be, “You are a procurement specialist and a professional request for proposal writer, RFP writer. And you’re going to be reviewing the attached request for proposal from, let’s say, Maricopa County Community College and review it and give me a task list of all of the requirements, just to be able to meet the specifications of the RFP or give me the scope.” And then it’ll spit out a response. And then based on that response, then you can continue to prompt it. So when I – so it’s like having a conversation with the person.

Sarah Hope: So, I don’t know how many of you have actually, you know, been online to talk to an AI, but I’m at the point to where I go on walks and I – because you can talk to it now, too. They’ve up there’s like new chatting where you can have a conversation with it and you can shoot ideas back and forth, but you have to think of the AI as that. You’re talking to it like a human and you have to give it like fifth-grader instructions.

Sarah Hope: So basically, what I do at this point is I upload the RFP and I say, “Okay, go ahead and read it. Tell me what the next steps are.” The beautiful thing is, is that once it starts learning, that’s the generative part of, like, okay, here’s the RFP. These are the things that we have to answer. Here’s a – here’s what it’s – here is, you know, the answers.

Sarah Hope: Because the other thing that I do is I upload a completed RFP that I’ve done in the past that has all the information about my company. So I upload kind of like the brains or like, the notes or the content of my company. You can even, you know, upload all the information from your website. I just use an old RFP that I won. So I upload that as an attachment. And I tell the AI, I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to upload this attachment. This is all the information about what we do and who we are. You’re going to ignore the pricing because the pricing is going to be different according to each customer or each RFP that we’re responding to, and you’re going to ignore who we’re responding to. The rest, all the information about our company, you’re going to remember.” So it’s going to attach it to memory.

Sarah Hope: So, then you have your an RFP that you already had, that you already – that you already won, that you already have all the information about your company. And then, you have the new RFP that you want to respond to. So you’re feeding the AI both of those. And so, what it’s going to do is it’s going to, as soon as you tell it to, because I play with it all the time and I’m like, “All right, go ahead and write a preliminary response.”

Sarah Hope: And then, I see where it’s at and it’ll say, and it’ll start responding. It’ll tell you what sections you have to fill out and it’ll give you an outline. And then you can keep – like let’s say the first outline is, “Oh, here’s an overview of Vertical Identity.” And it’ll start going into okay, we’ve been in business for ten years. Here are some of our clients. And then once it outputs that, you could say, “Okay, I like that or no we need to expand more. And I want to add information about some of these other clients that, you know, we have. So can you integrate that?” And it automatically rewrites it for you perfectly.

Lee Kantor: So the way that you’re leveraging the AI is you’re using its brain power, which incorporates the internet or large parts of the internet with specific information that’s relevant solely to you. So that way it can incorporate that information in the responses. Is that right?

Sarah Hope: Absolutely. That’s the beauty of it.

Lee Kantor: And then when you do that though, you were mentioning this kind of prompt engineering. That’s really where people have to get good at that part, right? Because it’s only as good as what you’re asking it to do. And you have to ask it very specifically and mindfully if you want a response that is useful.

Sarah Hope: Yes. So the prompt engineering piece is that, you know, it’s -the more information that you can load into the AI, that it understands who you are as a business, it understands your business. And then – and the way that you’re going to do that is by uploading information about your business to it so that you don’t have to write everything from scratch. Then, it’s going to start output you want to hear. But then it’s an ongoing back-and-forth conversation.

Sarah Hope: So if you don’t like what it’s saying, you could say, “Okay, add a joke here and there,” or, “Always speak from the first person,” or, you know, “Let’s add in in the middle like here’s an example of some Google reviews.” So you can add in your own touches to it that it’s going to capture all the elements that are required in the RFP. And it’s not going to let you forget those so that you can be as creative as you want and focus in on the creativity and the writing of the RFP, which the AI does also. But it’s going to help you not miss any of those deadlines, any of when the questions are, of what’s due, the forms that are needed to be attached. It’s going to keep you on task. And that’s a game changer for a small business that is relying on responding and winning these RFPs for the long-term revenue.

Lee Kantor: Right. And it’s a lot easier to edit responses than to write responses from scratch.

Sarah Hope: Oh, no, that’s the beautiful thing. It memorizes your prior RFP, so it’ll go gather the information and memorize it. It’s almost like a personal executive assistant, right? It knows everything. It’s like someone that’s been with you the whole time you’ve been in business, right, and knows everything about your business and you’re having a conversation back and forth. It’s awesome.

Sarah Hope: Like, I can’t – I can’t – I can’t even tell you how excited I am. I just recently did one for – I stopped writing them for a couple of years because we got really busy in the business and I was like, “I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m not winning them. It takes so long to respond to them.” And now I’m like, “Full on.” I’m like, “Bring the RFPs. Bring it.”

Sarah Hope: It is so much fun because it has just completely changed my viewpoint. The pain is gone. Yes, you still have to format it and make it look pretty because it’s not, you know, putting it in the beautiful Word format yet. But heck, you can hire someone on Fiverr to do that for you. You know, spend 20 or $30 to format it in Word. But the hard part is gone.

Lee Kantor: So now, like you mentioned that it was taking you six weeks to do an RFP before. What does it take you now?

Sarah Hope: Two to three days.

Lee Kantor: Wow. So that – I mean, that’s – you can do so many more in the same period of time. That’s crazy.

Sarah Hope: Yes. And I’m going to win more. You know why? Because I feel like I’m a – I’m a good – I’m a good writer, but I’m not a great writer. The words and the way that the AI can express itself and can put together sentences and paragraphs is brilliant. Like, it’s so much better than my personal output.

Sarah Hope: And before, there has been, I guess there’s like a Grammarly – people use Grammarly or stuff like that. Now, it’s just like -it just – it clarifies the message so much easier and more beautiful that it’s like been perfectly crafted to the end user, to who – your respondent, who the RFP is to. It’s beautiful.

Lee Kantor: Now, I mean, I think that what you’re saying is that people who have not done this before, this is a great use case to start kind of exploring using generative AI for RFPs, and especially with kind of the way that you outlined it, by putting in a successful RFP in there to kind of jumpstart the process. Like, that’s an important component of this, right, is to have an RFP that’s already been successful or already won written in order to help the AI, you know, help you more.

Sarah Hope: Well, that’s what I used this time. If I didn’t have that and I wanted to start responding to RFPs, what I would do is I would gather either your business plan or some of the proposals that you’ve done for other businesses, and start uploading all of that into AI. I use open AI and – but there’s other ones. There’s Perplexity. Perplexity is another platform. I think it’s like $20 a month. And that one’s really cool because it’ll ask you follow-up questions, so maybe things that you’re not thinking about.

Sarah Hope: But yes. So you have to feed it. Like, you have to feed it so that it understands who you are as a company. So if you don’t have an RFP that you’ve won before and you want to start responding to RFP, the first thing that you have to do is start uploading information about your company.

Sarah Hope: So if you have a business plan or if you have standard operating procedures, or if you have like your vision statement, or if you have a list of clients or if you’ve done your big vision, you know, a lot of us businesses do our big vision planning on where we want to go and the types of businesses that we want to have, I would upload all of that into AI and you have to keep one line item.

Sarah Hope: So whenever you’re chatting, it’s like a different line item on the left and you can name it and you could just say, this is RFPs. So I wouldn’t start a new line item for a new RFP, because remember you’re teaching the AI. It’s like – I won’t say it’s like a human because that’s kind of creepy, but it’s learning that, “Okay, I did this last RFP. This first one that we did, it was a winner. The second one that we did, okay, this was the final product with Oregon one. So this is the final product. You know, it came out really good.” I gave it feedback and I said, “Hey, I love this RFP. These were the services that we offered. This was the pricing. Hey, now we have another RFP. It happens to be in the federal space. I’m going to upload that one. And we’re going to say, ‘Okay, go ahead and combine. Look at the questions and answers. And now go ahead and let’s combine the information and start working on that RFP and pieces as well.'” It’s not going to be able to tackle the entire RFP in one shot. So, it’s going to have to take it in pieces.

Lee Kantor: Right. But the more that you do and the more that you add to it, the smarter it’s going to be and the more effective it’s going to be over time. It’s going to get better over time. It’s not – you’re not starting from scratch each time.

Sarah Hope: Correct. Now, so the executive summary, for example, is probably going to be the same. You usually have to do that, that your past experience is usually about the same. Where you’re going to get into or there’s going to be a lot of the sections of the customization is going to be your technical proposal. Like, how are you going to do it? Because then you’re going to be speaking directly to that RFP company that you’re responding to. So, it’s going to come up with the structured and coherent responses that align with your business’s strengths based on, you know, what it’s learned from you.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you share a little bit about why you decided to become part of the WBEC-West community?

Sarah Hope: WBEC-West. So I’ve been with WBEC-West, it was one of the first things that I did ten years ago when I became certified. I don’t know about anybody, any other women-owned business. I think we’re all scared when we first start. This was – I had been in the corporate world for a little bit, and I was, you know, starting completely on my own. The database company that I talked about in the beginning was owned by some other partners, and this was completely mine. And I had this huge fear of failure.

Sarah Hope: And one of the things that WBENC West did as far as certification is, is I – is they made sure that I was truly woman-owned and running the company, had the vision, and running it day to day. And what it gave me access to is other women that were CEOs and that were visionaries and that were strategists and that we could collaborate and be able to learn from each other. So there’s so many different sources and opportunities to get to know other women and classes.

Sarah Hope: I actually – one of the so many programs too that they – that are offered to WBENC. So, like the Goldman Sachs, a small business, 10,000 small business application program, that was completely complimentary; you do have to apply for it. I applied for it; the first time I did not get in. I just finished it last year. It was game-changing. It was all expense paid. It was a – I think it was about a six-month program. And then we did a graduation in New York. They flew me – at the time, I was living in Alaska, as I spent part of my time living in Alaska and the rest of the time living in Arizona. So they flew me from Alaska out with another 6 or 700 businesses. And we were in Goldman Sachs for the week, just with all sorts of leaders.

Sarah Hope: So it’s the people that you get to meet, the relationships that you get to form with people like SRP and Intel. You get to meet the buyers. They help you. They give you guidance. Other women that have been there and done that. There is nothing like the doors that have for me.

Sarah Hope: I also applied to be part of the forum, and the forum is a volunteer. It’s a three-year commitment and you get to help WBENC as a volunteer and be involved with some of the programs that we do on, like, how to do your capability statement, how to put it together, how to win an RFP, and how to network with the corporates. And so, all of that opened doors.

Lee Kantor: Now if somebody wants to learn more about your work, or maybe even has a question about using AI in RFPs, is there a way to connect with you? Is there a website they can go to?

Sarah Hope: Yes, you can come to my website. It’s verticalidentity.com. So vertical like horizontal and vertical, and identity, like stolen identity, dot com. You can email me at Sarah, with an H, S-A-R-A-H, @verticalidentity.com. I’m happy to connect with you and share some of my best practices. I love to mentor and help others, so please feel free to reach out.

Lee Kantor: Well, Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Sarah Hope: Thanks for having me. Good luck, everybody. So excited for you.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.