With the 2016 National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) Annual Conference winding down, it’s been a whirlwind week for the entire ClearStar team! Now that everyone’s back in the office, we sat down for a quick coffee chat with two of our thought leaders. Below, Craig Caddell (VP, CRA Solutions) and Kerstin Bagus (Director, Global Initiatives) recap #NAPBS2016:
Q: Congratulations to you both for nailing your presentations! What’s the #1 thing that surprised you at this year’s conference?
CC: I was again struck by the level of disruption occurring in the field of formal education. For-profit schools may be losing their accreditation and federal funding, some have already closed (ITT Technical Institute), certified online learning programs are proliferating at a rapid pace, traditional four year degrees are increasingly unaffordable…the list goes on and as a result employers are confused and ordering fewer education verifications.
KB: I was pleasantly surprised to hear Pamela Devata, (Labor and Employment Partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP) encouraging less data retention in the U.S. This matches the mindset toward data retention globally—less is more. It also matches what we’ve been working on at ClearStar as we are implementing processes to reduce the data that we hold once we are done with it.
Q: Did any of the sessions spark new ideas or initiatives for the coming year?
KB: I sat in the presentation on security given by Aurobindo Sundaram (VP, Information Security Assurance & Data Protection) from RELX Group. He gave some great advice about ways to improve information security in a company and how to do with without spending a fortune. He recognized that members do not have huge infosec budgets, and that even small providers have potential security risks. I’m excited to consider some of the down to earth tips that he provided.
CC: My participation in the NAPBS education session “The Future of Education and Verifying Credentials”, brought up many questions:
- how, when and by whom will standards for education verification be created to qualify non-traditional learning certificates?
- Is this creating an even bigger opportunity for fraud?
- How can CRAs meet the need to verify disparate qualifications and lead the effort to make candidate history clear and comprehensive?
These are questions we need to be addressed and I look forward to working with my colleagues at ClearStar and NAPBS to answer them.
Q: What do you think will be the hot topic for next year’s NAPBS conference?
KB: With the current status of global events, I anticipate that next year’s session will most likely include the litigation ongoing in the U.S. Internationally, it will probably be the new EU Global Data Protection Regulation (General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR), which is set to come into force May 2018.
Want more event recaps and information on what’s happening in the global background screening industry? Follow our blog or contact us for more information.
