The Naked Society. Vance Packard
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in the last several years,” he said, “their uses have broadened. We’ve investigated job applicants ranging from charwomen in a bank to the top corporate executives.”
Franchise holders of Fidelifacts are likely to charge $8.00 or $9.00 for each source checked on an ordinary worker, perhaps $80 for a more thorough report on a managerial candidate. Mr. Gillen told me the fact that each man holding a franchise is a former FBI agent is a great sales point because of the high esteem in which the public holds the FBI.
John Cye Cheasty, the former Secret Service, Internal Revenue, and Navy Intelligence man, serves as a counsel to top managment and confines himself largely to checking out managerial personnel. He relates: “We were asked the other day by a client where they should start checking their personnel. We laid down this rule. If the man makes more than $8000 a year he should be checked coming in [to the company]. If, on the other hand, he comes in at a lower salary but is considered a potential executive you should check him out anyhow.” In the past, he contends, companies have been content to judge a man simply on his “trade reputation.” Now, however, he states, more and more companies are making “extensive pre-employment checkups” before hiring such people. And he added: “I think that industrial intelligence is one of the fastest-growing businesses in the United States today. . . .”
Much of the investigating of executives, especially in the financial world, is done by Bishop’s Service. The “Bishop’s Report” on a man is held in considerable awe in some circles, and a good one is widely regarded as a prerequisite for getting ahead. Actually this is only partially true. The president of Bishop’s, William M. Chiariello, explains that his firm has actually made full investigative reports on about 10,000 executives. “The men who make decisions,” he said, “can’t escape the cold, hard facts of an investigation. I find that more and more business leaders . . . no longer rely upon their own appraisal.” In addition to its 10,000 full-fledged personnel reports made for specific clients, Bishop’s has in its files on the second story of a skyscraper in the Wall Street area of New York information on 5,000,000 people—or just about everyone of consequence in the U.S. business world.
A full Bishop’s Report on a man is not cheap. The Bishop motto is “A Man’s Whole Life Preludes the Single Deed.” A report is likely to cost from $150 up. Those that were shown to me ran from twelve to eighteen pages and covered with seeming thoroughness the subject’s career, his finances, his mode of life. Each page bore a stamp in the middle sternly reminding the client that all information thereon was “privileged and confidential.”
Mr. Chiariello, who was trained as a lawyer, considers amateurish and unnecessary the use of electronics, gumshoeing, keyhole peeping, or posing as a government agent to get information. “The heart of the investigating process is interviewing and gaining public documentary evidence.” His investigators work on salary rather than at piecework rates, the method of payment more common at large investigative firms. And he scorns the rule common with some firms that investigators must come up with “derogatory information” in at least ten per cent of the reports in order to “maintain a balance.” The great majority of the Bishop’s Reports, he states, are not only wholly favorable to the subject but in most cases are constructive for him because potential abilities and skills are uncovered.
In general, those engaged in investigative sleuthing try to check a man or woman out on the factual kind of information that can be learned by interviewing the person, his business associates and neighbors, or by searching records. Here are the major facts they are paid to uncover:
1. How is his work record? Frequently investigators go all the way back to cover every job held since leaving school, and make certain there are no unexplained gaps. Some investigators, such as those working for Bishop’s, also explore the school background. Investigators usually want to know not only how well the person performed his job but whether he had a healthy attitude toward the company.
2. How well has he lived within his means? This involves checking the credit bureaus for a rating and litigation bureaus for any suits or judgments, among other things. There is a widespread theory in business that a person who has at some time been lax about meeting financial obligations might also be lax in fulfilling his job responsibilities.
3. How has his home life been? Is there any evidence of an unhappy marriage or neglect of children? Investigators tend to be less wary of a man if he has both wife and children. As Mr. Chiariello explained it: “A man who is a bachelor can pick up and go, and even the man with a wife can pick up and go, but if he’s a man with five children it is hard for him to disappear.” In the case of a man being considered for an important executive job, many search firms and management consultants feel it is imperative that someone—either with the company or retained by the company—actually get into the man’s home for a look around. The management consulting firm, the McMurry Company, has developed a “Home Interview Report Form” for companies making such a check. The form includes such points to be noted as: “Who dominates the conversation? Whose opinions are decisive? . . . What is the attitude of others in the home? . . . Toward travel? Toward transfers? . . . Are the daily activities of the home arranged for the convenience of the applicant or for others?”
Dr. McMurry stated recently that in appraising potential chief executives “it is imperative that the candidate’s off-the- job circumstances be investigated as thoroughly as he is himself.” Such a check “is best done by a personal visit to the candidate’s home. This has the advantage that the entire household can be observed and that family members tend to speak more freely on their home grounds. It is thus easier to ascertain who is dominant in the family; the emotional climate of the home, and the extent to which the wife will be friendly and supportive or critical, deprecatory or a ‘problem’ in some other fashion.”
Sales Management carried an article by one of Dr. McMurry’s associates entitled: “Don’t Hire a Salesman—Hire a Man & Wife Team.” Dr. McMurry believes any effort to eavesdrop on a home by electronic means would be entirely inexcusable. He states that it is bad enough to invade the privacy of the individual’s home by interviewing him there. He does feel, however, that situations might well arise when it would be appropriate for a man’s superior—after the man has been hired—to make follow-up visits should he have reservations about the man’s home situation or the man’s performance.
4. Are there any court convictions on the person’s record? The professor who wrote the AMA brochure on keeping bad apples out of the barrel stressed the fact that few people have actual criminal records but that this check is nevertheless regarded as necessary because permitting even a few with such backgrounds to enter the company gates could be “highly important.” And he added ominously: “Convictions as apparently innocuous as traffic violations have enabled some investigators to uncover everything from felonies to clearly psychopathic behavior.” The head of a leading investigative firm scoffed at this assertion. He said: “We have prepared any number of reports on extremely competent executives, who were extremely sane but were always in a hurry.” Frequently information about many a person’s legal tangles can be got simply by checking the credit bureau in the area where he has lived.
5. Is there anything in the person’s health history to create concern? Some investigators look into this quite thoroughly. As the Baltimore investigator explained: “He could be suffering from a latent illness which could recur and result in a subsequent compensation claim against the company. Or he could be under a psychiatrist’s care.”
6. Is the person controversial in any way? This assumes greatest importance in checking out potential managers, but even a workman can be too controversial for the company’s comfort. Mr. Chiariello said quite a few of his clients want assurance that the man conforms. He added, “Big business hates controversy in any of its employees.” A number of other investigators mentioned that they watch out for controversial types. The president of one large investigating organization, when invited to explain what kind of things can make an ambitious man too controversial for big business, explained what he felt was the prevailing viewpoint in these terms:
“It is not necessary that the man be an active member of a church; most aren’t, but they can be. But does he conform, or is he an avowed, loud rebel? . . . Whether he he is Republican or Democrat