By Maggie Downs
Enquirer staff writer

Selection.com employees Amy Billari and David Hart complete a tandem jump July 28 at Skydive Greensburg, Ind. This was Billari's first skydive. The Enquirer/MEGGAN BOOKER

John P. Hart, chief executive officer of Selection.com, is also a skydiver with Team Fastrax. The Enquirer/ERNEST COLEMAN

COLERAIN TWP. - When John Hart does business, it goes a little something like this: The plane door slides open. He peers out at the landscape, nearly two miles below. With a "ready-set-go," he hurls himself into freefall, then deploys his parachute.

Hart spends 40-plus hours a week as chairman and CEO of Selection.com, a national provider of background-verification services.

He also spends more than 25 hours a week with Team Fastrax, five skydivers who will be competing professionally during the U.S. National Skydiving Championships in October.

What's notable, though, is that Hart has managed to combine his two passions. Parachuting has become an icon for Selection.com, just like the blimp for Goodyear.

Demonstration skydives, done into high-profile festivals and events, provide four-minute advertisements as the crowd gazes upon parachutes with the Selection.com logo.

Clients and employees are frequently taken on tandem skydives.

Seminars on team-building and smart hiring practices, called "Who's packing your parachute?" rely heavily on skydiving analogies.

"You can have fear. But sometimes you have to be willing to take a risk," said Hart, who has about 1,800 skydives under his belt. "It's the same with business as it is with skydiving. All of the great entrepreneurs have been risk-takers."

The business, which traces Social Security numbers and checks criminal, motor vehicle and educational histories for human resources departments, was started in 1986. In 1990, Hart bought the 89-percent majority interest.

Selection.com boasts more than 15,000 clients, from companies of all sizes and does almost a million checks each year. The business is almost entirely Web-based, running on 56 different servers with no outside hosting.

The company's most popular service is called Search America, a multi-jurisdictional search of state and county criminal records.

Sky's the limit

Hart takes his skydiving just as seriously as his day job.

Team Fastrax, named for the company's software, was formed three years ago and maintains a schedule as rigorous as that of any other professional sports team. The jumpers wake up at 4 a.m. to do 30 or more skydives on practice days. They exercise together with weight and cardiovascular machines.

They work with a nutritionist, a yoga instructor and a peak-performance coach. Deep-fried food is a no-no. Hits of pure oxygen are pushed instead of coffee.

They also practice about 70 hours a year in wind tunnels, which simulate freefall, and they spend much of the winter at skydiving drop zones in warmer climates.

And they do all this for a competition where rounds last mere seconds as they plummet toward the ground at speeds of more than 120 mph.

In four-way skydiving competition, team members run through a series of formations prescribed by judges. Leaving the plane at more than 10,000 feet, each team tries to run through the most formations possible in 35 seconds before flying away from one another and opening their parachutes.

"The skydive passes so quickly, you can't screw up. You have got to be physically and mentally on top of your game," Hart said. "You've got to go into it thinking that you are a champion."

Team members Eric Gin, Niklas Hemlin and videographer John Judy work for Selection.com. (Billy Andrews is a full-time independent software developer.) Each relocated from across the country to be on Team Fastrax.

During the "Who's packing your parachute?" seminars, Hart promises people will learn as much about skydiving as smart hiring - in part because he hopes to spread understanding of the sport.

"People seem to think of skydiving as crazy and risky," he said. "But if you go into it thinking caution, it's an incredibly safe sport. It's no different than snow skiing."

Extreme business

It's also the key to attracting new clients.

"Skydiving is so unique and exciting, people remember Selection.com," said David Hart, who leads all the seminars and is the brother of John Hart. "I could stand up and talk for an hour and it could be completely boring. Or I could give them something a little more interesting."

The vice president of team-building concepts for Selection.com created the skydiving-themed programs almost two years ago. By the end of this year, he will have brought his message to more than 4,000 people.

Hart, a skydiver with about 2,000 jumps, starts off the seminar with an anecdote about an emergency situation he experienced with a malfunctioning main parachute. He had to use his reserve, or back-up, parachute.

"The incident left me wanting to hug the person who packed my reserve but questioning the person who packed my main," he said. "Likewise, there's value in effective screening to build your team. You want someone who is reliable and will do quality work."

Carly Staebler, a human resources representative with Micro Electronics in Columbus, attended a seminar in January. She said the information she was given wasn't drastically different from procedures already in place at the company of more than 2,000 employees. But it presented everything in a fun way.

"It was a memorable analogy," she said.

Unusual seminar

The program compares other hiring practices to the sport of parachuting.

For example, the world-record-setting formation of 300 skydivers is used to show the necessity of effective screening to build a successful team.

Background checks of potential employees are equated to the checks that skydivers do on their gear prior to each jump.

And of course, working together with a great team is landing on target.

"We've defined the need out there, and it totally relates to skydiving," David Hart said. "Because hiring is an extreme thing."

E-mail mdowns@enquirer.com