How do you define geekiness? One way of putting it is that a geek is someone very knowledgeable, at least on a certain subject, probably something to do with technology, but not limited to that. A geek is obsessed with a certain subject and would spend most of his time studying that or talking about that. On the other hand, a geek is also defined as socially inept and unfashionable, which is not quite good, but at least it gives you an almost certainty that the person doesn’t have a criminal record. Why is that?
How can social awkwardness be a good thing?
Most people spend a lot of time honing their social skills. It is important to be a people person and a good communicator if you want to have a successful career. In HR, this is referred to as having soft skills, and in many jobs, they are an essential quality.
A geek will rarely have soft skills because they’re very single-minded. And kind of lonely. Unless they find other geeks online to talk about their shared passion. However, a geek is probably a person who grew up without many friends and they didn’t waste their time engaging in risky behaviors.
The class nerd doesn’t get invited to wild parties, nor does he spend time with his buddies drinking beer and then painting graffiti. The geek will probably be engrossed in a book while his cool classmates are outside, generally being up to no good.
Which is more likely to have a criminal record – the geek or the daredevil every girl dreams of?
Do you need to run a background check on a geek?
Definitely, yes. You cannot trust anybody, even if they do come across as completely harmless.
Say you’re looking to hire someone for the IT department and the candidate in front of you is in full geek mode. He cannot stop talking about operating systems, security protocols, and all sorts of weird things you don’t really understand.
Sure, they have a great CV. They went to a good school, they might have some awards for tech-related competitions, and they’ve been working in a really reliable company. Sounds like the dream candidate. Before you offer them the job, you still need to run a background check. It’s a safe thing to do considering that this person will have access to all your company’s data.
In most cases, it’s clearly just a formality, but when you work with an online police check agency, running a criminal history check is so easy to do and anyway, you know the saying ‘better safe than sorry’. When you run a background check through an online character agency like the website link for ANCC – australiannationalcharactercheck.com.au where results mostly come back in 2 days, it’s not like you have to wait much.
If the geek in front of you is for real, he certainly won’t have a criminal record and he’ll make a wonderful addition to your IT department.
Still, there’s always a danger, especially with computer geeks. The Internet is a wonderful place but it also has its dark corners, so you don’t want someone involved in online scams or something equally bad.
The upsides of hiring geeks
It is known that geeks can work their butts off for organizations and people that they respect. Therefore there is every reason to try and find the right candidate to join your team.
A sound starting place is the hiring process where background checks also come into use. For example, it is known that the best IT professionals are geeks. These people are masters with computer science. When hiring a geek, imagine that you’re hiring something like a doctor. The doctor should have the correct qualifications, be able to pass a background check and the hiring process should favor technical competence and in some instances leadership skills over just social awkwardness.
Whilst it is true that geeks are more likely to pass criminal background checks, it is also true that hiring the right geek can prove to be invaluable for your organization if recruiting is done the right way.