Instructor Passes Self-Administered Background Check

Derek Hollis, 47, owner of Iron Summit Jiu-Jitsu in Weston, Connecticut, announced Tuesday that he has completed a thorough background check on his newly hired head instructor, Marcus Pierson, 34, a purple belt and former insurance adjuster. Pierson conducted the entire check over three days, at no cost to the gym. Hollis told parents at evening class that “all boxes are checked” and the community “can rest assured” about their instructor’s fitness. Pierson, who will be teaching four classes per week at a salary of $2,400 monthly, had submitted the background check on Monday morning. The background check, filed as a single-page document titled “Marcus’s Check” and printed on gym letterhead, required Pierson to answer eight questions about his own history. Question one: “Have you ever hurt someone?” Pierson’s response: “Only on the mats.” Question two: “Would you trust yourself around kids?” His response: “Yes.” The document included a section asking Pierson to rate his own moral character on a 1-10 scale. He selected 9, with a handwritten note saying “10 felt like bragging.” One parent asked what Pierson’s basis for self-evaluation was. Pierson said he “just kind of felt like a 9” and wasn’t sure how someone would rate themselves any differently. Pierson said the experience was “thorough and honest.” When asked if having the person being checked conduct the check presented any conflicts of interest, he paused for what felt like a full minute. “I didn’t think about that until you said it,” he said. “But I would have told myself if something was wrong. I’m pretty honest with myself about stuff.” When pressed on whether that’s actually how self-assessment works, he said, “You’re making this weird.” The document included a section titled “Red Flags.” Pierson listed none under the header. However, in the margins adjacent to several questions, he had handwritten “TBD” and drawn an arrow pointing to a note that read “probably fine.” One parent, Jennifer Kwan, whose 8-year-old and 10-year-old both train twice weekly, asked to see the full background check. Hollis said it was “confidential” and also “still being finalized” even though it had been approved. Kwan asked if there was an address where she could file a complaint. Hollis gave her his personal email. Pierson had submitted his background check three times before Hollis accepted it. The first version listed his full legal history, including two noise complaints from neighbors and a 2019 incident involving a disputed parking space. The second version excluded “anything from before 2015,” trimming the document from two pages to one. The third and final version, the one Hollis approved, was written entirely in second person (“You have trained since age 12..You are good with kids..”). It read more like a character reference than a background check. Hollis said the shift to second person made it “feel more objective.” When asked how second-person perspective could be more objective than first-person testimony, Hollis said, “The voice is different so it feels like someone else is saying it,” which Pierson found “actually smart.” The Connecticut Youth Grappling Association, which regulates competitive events but has no authority over gym hiring practices, issued a statement saying Hollis’s approach was “not best practice” and that “ideally, background checks would be conducted by an unaffiliated third party.” A representative added, “But we also can’t tell a small gym owner how to run his business,” then paused and said, “Actually, we probably can, legally,” and promised to issue formal guidance sometime next quarter. The association also noted that best practice would include verification with previous employers. Hollis said he had not contacted Pierson’s previous employer, a YMCA in Bridgeport, and was “not planning to.” Two other gym owners in the state said they had considered similar approaches. Derek Saunders, who owns Apex Grappling in Hartford, said he had once checked himself on himself. “I did it myself for eight years,” Saunders said. “Then one day my daughter asked me why I knew I wasn’t a criminal and I couldn’t explain it. That’s when I realized the system had a flaw.” Saunders now uses a third-party background check company that costs $80 and takes five business days. When asked the difference between his self-check and Hollis’s self-check, Saunders said he “probably would have realized it was ridiculous faster if someone had asked me about it on day two.” Pierson said he enjoyed the self-directed experience and felt “really understood.” He added that in his previous position as a basketball coach at the Bridgeport YMCA, his background check “was done by someone I never met,” which felt “impersonal and sterile.” At Iron Summit, the collaborative approach felt “like we were building something together.” He did note that when he asked himself what his greatest weakness was, he had paused for several minutes and ultimately written “probably nothing, honestly,” which he said felt “liberating.” Hollis had circled that line and added a note: “Humility. I like that.” Parents who raised formal concerns about the self-directed check were offered a compromise: Pierson would conduct a background check on Hollis as well, and they could compare results. Hollis agreed to this. Pierson’s findings were that the gym owner was “pretty cool, actually” and “definitely not dangerous to kids or anyone really.” The report included recommendations that Hollis should “smile more” and “consider upgrading the gym’s sound system.” Hollis accepted the results and used them in a team meeting to justify not replacing the 2008 speakers he’d promised to replace in 2019. When asked if mutual background checks conducted by the subjects created any logical problems for institutional trust, Hollis said, “We’ve built a foundation of trust. That’s what actually matters.” Pierson agreed and suggested they could probably eliminate the background check entirely next year and “just vibe instead.” Iron Summit Jiu-Jitsu is currently seeking a second instructor position. Applicants are encouraged to submit a self-conducted background check in the format of their choice. Hollis said he expects to review all submissions personally, though he acknowledged that might take “a while” because he was currently in the process of checking himself on himself, inspired by the Pierson model. He said that doing a background check on yourself was “actually harder than it looks” and that he understood now why Pierson had needed three attempts. When Kwan asked if there was a timeline for hiring, Hollis said “probably fall” and added that he’d let the applicants know once he finished evaluating his own integrity.