Employee Background Checks

For jobs requiring government security clearances, employment background research is a definite necessity. This will depend on local and state laws but jobs that involve dealing with minors, elderly individuals or the disabled are almost guaranteed to require a search into the applicant's history - some even a thorough investigation. These types of positions, along with security and law enforcement work, need thorough background examinations for personality profiles and history.

Background checks can also verify whether a potential employee is telling the truth during his application or he's padding it like one of the estimated 40% of all resumes that are either blatantly falsifying qualifications or inflating it to appear better suited for the job.

Negligent hiring practices no longer go unschated as well. Already, lawsuits blaming employers for the actions of hired personnel are on the rise. When an employee does things that causes threat or harm to others in the workplace, employers can be held liable. It's bad for business and can seriously damage company reputation. Not to mention the monetary costs such a problem can potentially entail.

And with terrorism and corporate scandals developing into daily fodder for the media, going through the trouble of conducting past history checks for potential hirees is but a small price to pay.

Just take the case from several years ago of two carpet cleaners who, months after they serviced an affluent home, came back to ransack it. When the robbers were found and identified, the homeowner sued the cleaning service. As it turns out, both workers had prior arrests, including criminal convictions, before they were hired, information that could have been easily discovered by a simple history lookup. Instead, the company ended up paying over eleven million dollars in damages, enough to turn any business upside down.

In another instance, a realty company was held responsible for one of their agents who cheated a client into paying off a $158,000 loan. The company knew nothing about the employee's actions and wasn't aware of the transactions that happened. Yet, they were implicated and charged because the real estate agent had a questionable history, which included falsifying documents for a former employer, passing bad checks, and pretending to be a licensed agent.

Or the numerous companies who ended up hiring unqualified personnel based on forged resumes and exaggerated skillsets, disrupting workflow and putting additional strain on other workers.

The costs of such consequences simply outweigh the small amount extra precaution can entail.

While laws are in place to keep certain facts out of the open like school records and bankruptcy filings, it's really hard to hide anything from someone interested in finding it. Welcome to the information age, where most everything can be found out with just a little extra effort.

Employee background checks, while they may be construed as an invasion of certain privacies, serve to keep the workplace running optimally. The last thing every office needs are incompetent employees who lied through their application, mentally unstable individuals on high-pressure jobs and people with shady pasts running freely across your floor. And if a properly-done background check can prevent any or all of that, it's definitely worth it.

Just as with most things, there is a balance to doing background verification on potential employees. Do too little or none at all and you can end up being sued like the carpet cleaners from a couple years ago. Do too much and you might end up crossing the line between protecting your company and doing prohibited background inquiries. Federal and state laws do have limits on personnel background research and it is best to adhere with them before proceeding further. If you decide to hire an employee screening company to do the job, make sure to check their track records so you can be comfortable knowing they work within the confines of existing laws.

With the current price and efficiency of professional background checking services and the realized benefits of such, few employers can really consider doing without it. Online background research offerings are readily available at low costs on the internet and many public records are open for all to see.

Among the details employers can get from pre-screening companies include education records, social security verification, arrest and criminal records, credit ratings, previous employments, character interviews, and others, depending on how thorough the investigation is needed to get. The good companies will sort out all the details for you, including which items an employer can legally use to refuse hiring someone, instead of just dumping a pile of facts into their email.

Good employees are a resource most businesses can't do without and a quality background check can ensure that the most qualified applicant will get the job.