Don't Get Played

Criminal background checks are scientific and binary. Social media screening is different. It surfaces values, patterns, and character in ways no formal document ever could. In a world where AI has made every resume look polished, that gap matters more than ever. In this episode of Don’t Get Played, Sarah O'Melia sits down with Jaime Frankos, a social media screening expert, to make the case that what candidates post publicly already tells a story. The only question is whether hiring teams are paying attention before something goes wrong. The conversation covers what a compliant process looks like, where organizations tend to stumble, and how AI paired with human analysts keeps reports fair: - Organizations that take a reactive approach are the ones that end up in trouble. - FCRA compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. A thorough internal policy is what makes the process defensible. - AI classifiers and human analysts working together keep reports from drifting into bias. The digital footprint already exists. The hiring process should account for it.

In this episode of Don’t Get Played, we explore one of the most overlooked choke points in healthcare workforce development: clinical placements and the clearance process that determines whether students can actually begin them. Matt Jaye sits down with Heather Pierce, Director of Rotations at the Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, to unpack why the campus-to-clinic pipeline is breaking down. It’s not because students aren’t ready, but because the systems meant to clear them are fragmented, slow, and operationally brutal. Grounded in Cisive’s StudentCheck Benchmark Report ("Where Are All the Nurses?"), the conversation highlights what administrators and students are saying loud and clear: - Clinical placements are the No. 1 operational inefficiency. - Nearly nine in 10 students hit onboarding challenges. - Everyone wants fewer systems, clearer requirements, and less chaos. The bottom line: Time, talent, and trust are being lost in the handoff between school and clinic — but it’s fixable. READ THE REPORT: To see the full Cisive PreCheck research report, visit the Cisive website: https://www2.cisive.com/clinical-placement-report-studentcheck

What if the documents used to verify candidates were never designed to be trustworthy in the first place? In this episode of Don’t Get Played, Sarah O’Melia sits down with Zach Daigle, Chief Strategy and Customer Officer at Cisive, and Etan Bernstein, Head of Ecosystem at the Velocity Network Foundation, to explore how verifiable credentials are reshaping hiring trust. Zach and Etan explain why modern hiring still relies on self-reported resumes and PDFs, forcing employers and background screeners to spend days verifying information that candidates already claim is accurate. As Etan explains, “Every fact needs to be checked because there's no way to trust the source.” They unpack how cryptographically secure credentials allow degrees, licenses, and work history to prove themselves instantly, reducing verification timelines from days to hours and giving individuals ownership of their career data through portable digital wallets.

Why do transportation companies with clean records and perfect compliance still end up with accidents, lawsuits, and headline-making failures? In this episode of Cisive’s Don’t Get Played, Carlo Solorzano sits down with Mitch Ashby, VP of Talent Management at Andrews Logistics, and Jared Alexander of Cisive Driver iQ to unpack why background checks create false certainty in safety-critical hiring. Mitch draws on 15 years spanning safety and talent to explain how Andrews built a hiring system that layers judgment on top of screening, why clean MVRs don’t predict behavior under pressure, and how desperation to fill seats quietly increases operational risk. They also dig into urgency as a warning signal, how recent incidents slip past even robust screening systems, and why the discipline to slow down hiring decisions is often the difference between a near miss and a catastrophe.

Don’t Get Played is a bi-weekly podcast from Cisive about trust at work in the age of AI, remote hiring, and evolving workplace risk. Hosted by Sarah O’Melia, Matt Jaye, and Carlo Solórzano, the show goes beyond background checks to explore the bigger questions facing talent acquisition and people leaders today: Who can you trust? How do you protect your organization without undermining culture? And what does leadership judgment look like in a world where credibility can be manufactured? If you’re responsible for hiring, leading, or safeguarding a workforce, these conversations matter.