Screening firm taps Internet to get hard facts

By David Flaum, Scripps Newspaper Group

With the business he’s in — background screening and identity investigation — you’d expect Jim Davis to skulk around Memphis in a trench coat with a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

Truth to tell, Davis, the new chief executive officer of Verified Person Inc., is more the computer geek, comfortable in a pullover shirt and slacks behind a keyboard and monitor.

“This is really a software business,” said Davis, 61, a programmer from the early days of Sun Microsystems to Hewlett-Packard to Apple Computers.

“That’s all I’ve ever done,” said Davis, who moved to Memphis in July as part of the company’s partial shift from New York and expansion.

Basically, Verified Person customers go to its Web-based systems to screen employees, confirm identities, even recruit workers.

In the late 1990s, workplace violence and theft losses inspired companies to check the backgrounds of prospective workers more closely than they had before to cut the risks of trouble, Davis said.

“It’s getting to be just about a requirement today,” he said. “Employees’ records are a good predictor of what they’ll do in the future.”

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