Only good fortune kept Christine Cunneen from arriving at two scheduled meetings at the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
“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, with Cunneen reporting more than 500 clients, from Alaska to Puerto Rico.
“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.”
In fact, she said, “we find more people are lying on job applications because of the competitive job market.”
“I think human resources professionals are aware that these things are happening,” she said. “We know what to look for, so we can spot these people.”
When Cunneen speaks at business and industry events, she’s often asked to share one of her most unusual background-screening projects.
“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.” •
