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A background check comes back with a conviction. Now what? If the first instinct is to skip that candidate and move on, that reaction is common. It is also where employers walk into trouble.

If you use AI to screen, shortlist, or rank candidates, the question is no longer whether your tools work efficiently. It is whether they hold up under scrutiny. Vendors call them neutral. Regulators are starting to ask for proof.

A criminal background check is an investigation into a candidate's criminal history. It can show felony and misdemeanor convictions, infractions, and pending criminal cases. Most employers agree that criminal background checks are part of building a safe, compliant workplace.

Your background check provider just called a previous employer to verify a candidate. The phone rang. An automated voice asked for dates of employment and job title. The employer hung up. And now it's your problem. This happens constantly.

Your last background check probably came back clean. But if your provider isn't searching federal courts, clean doesn't mean complete, it means 94 districts went unchecked. There are 94 federal court districts in the United States.

If you're hiring in New York, in any state with an AI hiring rule, or with any AI tool in your screening stack, the compliance map looks very different in 2026 than it did when the New York social media law took effect in March 2024. Two years on, three things have changed:

A column for HR professionals who thought they had this one covered. In 1997, the Clinton administration issued a piece of internal guidance that would quietly become one of the most important documents in HR compliance.

Clean Slate laws are changing how background checks work, and if you hire using criminal history reports, now is the time to start doing things differently. Why now?

On September 2, 2025, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced plans to expand its mandatory drug testing panel by adding fentanyl (a synthetic opioid) and its metabolite, norfentanyl (the inactive byproduct created when the body breaks down fentanyl), to the panel.

Your Compliance Checklist: 7 Steps to Prepare Now … • Audit your current drug testing policy.

New York's statewide ban on employer credit checks is here. Senate Bill S3072, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul on December 19, 2025, took effect April 18, 2026. Here's what the law requires, who's exempt, and what to do now. What does the law say?

The Risk of Résumé Fraud Is Real … Has a job candidate ever “padded” their résumé in hopes of landing a position with your company? It's more common than you may think. Some job candidates lie to get hired.