Only good fortune and timing kept Christine Cunneen from arriving at two scheduled meetings at the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. She was a certified professional accountant, at the time working for an accounting firm in New York that had offices in the Empire State Building and on Long Island.
“I was handling a tax audit for the New York State Department of Taxation, and I also had a client I was supposed to meet in the World Trade Center at 11 a.m.,” said Cunneen. “That morning I came into my Long Island office to gather my files for the two meetings at the World Trade Center. Then we got the news of what happened.”
The tragedy may have nudged her on a path to Rhode Island.
“Everyone was kind of in shock for a while, but I think I just started looking at living in Boston and Providence, and I fell in love with Providence,” she said.
Two years later, she was in the Ocean State.
She worked for an accounting firm in Rhode Island, meanwhile starting on her MBA part time at Nichols College in Dudley, Mass. One of the projects for the program was to work with a group of students to write a business plan. One of her accounting clients wanted to take his company to the next level, so his business, Hire Image LLC, was the subject for her project.
In writing the plan, Cunneen saw great potential for the background-screening business and by 2005 began working with Hire Image. Today she is CEO and co-owner.
Johnston-based Hire Image, which has seven employees, does background screening, employment verification and drug testing, landlord references, eviction history, criminal background and sex offender checks, as well as verification of education, and professional and personal references.
Clients cover the width and breadth of business and industry, including large and small companies, universities, health care institutions, staffing agencies, call centers and government organizations across the United States.
“The way our growth has happened is, we just show up and do what we say we’re going to do. Be a person of your word. That’s how we build relationships,” said Cunneen.
If there’s a disturbing, but in some ways positive, business outcome to the negative occurrences related to terrorism and the economy in the past several years, it’s that businesses need more of the services Hire Image provides.
“I think one of the catalysts was 9/11,” said Cunneen. “Companies realize they don’t know who they’re working with.”
Plus, “it’s expensive to hire, with the training and the benefits.”
While large employers may tend to do more extensive background testing, it’s trickled down to smaller companies, especially if they are subcontracted by larger companies, she said.
One of the darker developments that’s come along with the tight job market and the capabilities of technology is a shadow industry in resume verification of potential employees.
“We find more people are lying on job applications because of the competitive job market,” said Cunneen. “The biggest things we find are lies about educational degrees, where they’ve worked or how much they earned.”
Some job seekers try to get an edge by paying for services providing what are basically fraudulent call centers with people answering the phone to verify lies on applications, said Cunneen. Those are mostly outside the U.S., she said.
That industry has been growing for several years, said Cunneen.
Being involved in professional groups, which provide ongoing professional development, has been Cuneen’s main path to leadership in her industry.
“I knew when I first got involved in the business, I had to learn more about the industry. So I joined the National Association of Professional Background Screeners, and now I’m set to chair that national association in October,” she said. “I got involved and I just keep showing up. It keeps me up to date on the constant changes in the industry.”
In addition to its main office in Johnston, Hire Image has an office in Pompano Beach, Fla., which it launched when the co-owner, Tom Tomlinson, moved to the Sunshine State for a while. He’s since moved back to Massachusetts, and the Florida office is used for work or client meetings.
When Cunneen speaks at business and industry events, she’s often asked to share one of her most unusual background-screening projects.
“We were doing a background check on an employee for a company in Florida, and once we started checking, we saw some discrepancies and we knew something just didn’t seem right,” said Cunneen.
“We found out the person had not only changed their name and gotten a new license, he became a she. He had a criminal history for beating up pregnant women,” she said. “Here he was dressing as a woman and using the ladies room.”
While that may be been an unusual case, Hire Image uncovers many other disturbing personal histories.
“We’ve had people we found out were rapists and murderers and wanted by the police,” said Cuneen.
“We’ve found more of those types of cases in Florida, not much of that here. Rhode Island is a great place to be.” •
