How To Run An Employee Background Check

No employer wants to make a bad hire. The toll of a bad hire adds upwardly apace when you lot consider:

Fourth dimension spent hiring and onboarding
Time spent on performance management
Visitor reputation risk
Potential risk to coworkers and customers
Turnover costs

Luckily for employers, the run a risk of a bad hire can be reduced with a thorough hiring and screening process. With different background cheque options, how do you choose the right ane for your business? Information technology depends on the information you lot need and how much fourth dimension and money y'all're willing to spend. Keep reading to learn how to exercise employee background checks before yous make your side by side hire.

What Background Checks Show

Pre-employment screening is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. Screening helps you brand better-informed hiring decisions that tin can protect your company, your employees, your customers, and your reputation, and learning how to do a background bank check is 1 of the well-nigh important strategies for your business. Then what exactly should a background check show? It depends on the position.

When it comes to the safe of your employees and customers, criminal and sexual practice offender records should exist inspected where appropriate. If the candidate in question volition have admission to confidential data, a felony record check could be a priority. When learning how to do background checks on employees, it's critical to know the employment laws surrounding the position.

While prior employment and education verification tin can exist completed without a background check service, many minor businesses don't accept direct admission to credit-based tools. Pre-employment screening services can indicate a job candidate'southward fiscal responsibility, trustworthiness, criminal past and more.

As you learn how to exercise a groundwork check, yous'll encounter three unlike screening solutions: traditional background checks, online DIY background checks, and pre-employment screening services.

1) Traditional Background Bank check Company

Traditional employment background check companies are designed to offering several screening options. A traditional groundwork bank check company may provide data about the following:

Misdemeanor and felony criminal records
Sexual practice offender status
Social Security Number validation
Employment verification
Educational activity verification
License verification
Credit reports
Motor vehicle records
Military records
Address history

While these types of checks are thorough, they can also be time consuming and costly. Using a traditional groundwork bank check company could mean waiting anywhere from days to weeks for results. In the meantime, your open position will remain vacant, potentially resulting in pregnant losses in productivity and profit. Yous will likewise oft spend more for the boosted enquiry and interviews that can be required in these types of checks.

Traditional Groundwork Check Companies May Non Be the All-time Fit for a Modest Business concern

For many modest business organization owners, traditional background cheque services provide more data than necessary. For example, information technology might be imperative to check the driving records of whatever potential delivery driver, just it might not be appropriate to run a credit check for employment on a 16-twelvemonth-old, part-fourth dimension cashier.

While it's important to become a comprehensive view of your candidate, these checks may require spending time and money on additional reports, research, and details that may non be necessary. As a result, you may pay too much for information y'all don't need, and be forced to wait too long—in the concurrently, you may lose out on a stellar candidate.

One of the most time-consuming checks that may be performed in this type of screening is a manual county-level criminal record search. This type of search requires a person to physically visit a courthouse to check canton-level criminal records and can have as long as 30 days to return results. In nearly cases, an instant criminal search is cheaper, quicker, and generally comprehensive enough to run across the screening needs of a small business.

Bottom Line: Traditional background checks can provide a thorough look at a job candidate's history. However, these services tin can be fourth dimension consuming, costly, and provide more information than necessary for a small business concern.

2) Online People Search Databases

Some employers opt to take the DIY approach for learning how to do background checks on employees and use costless online people search databases to retrieve groundwork data on their applicants. This choice may be user-friendly and gratis, but may not exist reliable enough for hiring decisions.

Depending on the site, you lot may receive information including:

Sexual assault offenses
History of bankruptcies
Judgments
Address history
Spousal relationship records

Information technology'southward hard to verify if the information provided on these websites is right. Basing your hiring decision on inaccurate or inconclusive information can result in a bad rent that causes more than problem downwardly the road.

Lesser Line: While online groundwork bank check websites may be convenient, their information may not be reliable plenty for hiring decisions, and it's all-time to learn other methods for how to exercise a background check.

3) Online Employment Screening Services

One of the quickest methods and easiest ways to run a reliable background check through an online employment screening service similar TransUnion ShareAble for Hires. ShareAble for Hires allows you to cheque comprehensive credit and criminal reports within minutes and verify your applicant's identity so you know they are who they say they are.

Information is pulled from a variety of sources to create a comprehensive view of a candidate's background. The ShareAble for Hires database contains nearly 300 million national and country criminal records, Most Wanted databases, and the Sexual activity Offender Public Registry. Y'all get access within minutes to information potentially including:

Credit reports from TransUnion, a trusted credit reporting agency
Identity verification
Felony and misdemeanor records for 43 states*
Records from the FBI, Homeland Security, and DEA
National Sexual practice Offender Public Registry records

Accurateness is imperative when screening candidates, but it can be tricky if your candidate has a common proper noun. ShareAble for Hires' advanced record matching capabilities increase correct matches and reduce inaccurate records.

employee background screening

Bottom Line: Online screening services like ShareAble for Hires give y'all fast and affordable admission to essential background information that helps protect your business organization.

How to do a Groundwork Check: The Practise's and Don'ts

When screening a potential new hire, there are certain processes you'll want to follow to ensure you lot're getting the best quality candidate. Below is an overview of the do's and don'ts to keep in mind during screening.

Do's:

Do be consistent with background bank check policies.

If you accept multiple departments in your business which require different screening criteria, consider dividing jobs into dissimilar categories and developing position-specific, standardized searches. For example, entry level employees might be subjected to a basic background check, whereas those capable of making fiscal decisions should additionally exist given a credit check.

It's wise to accept your pre-employment screening process documented in case whatever issues arise in the hereafter.

Practise be thorough.

When it comes to learning how to practise a background check, simply calling past employers or professional references is not plenty. You may never know if the professional reference they listed is actually a friend or roommate.

Even if a by employer corroborates their role in an organisation, they might non know about a previous criminal record. Social media is also an unreliable outlet and non a comprehensive source of information, and then go beyond searching for your candidate online.

Be expansive in your search for information and don't just look for one single item. Only because someone'due south accost is verified does not hateful that their past is free of criminal history. In addition to checking for any criminal reports, call back to verify their employment history and pedagogy every bit well.

Do follow local laws governing the employ of background checks for employment.

Hiring managers must be sensitive to the local, state, and federal laws regarding employment decisions. When making personnel decisions—including hiring, memory, promotion, and reassignment—it's natural for about employers to be curious virtually their applicants' backgrounds.

However, whatever time you make an employment decision based on a person'due south background information, you must comply with federal laws enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee (EEOC), and similar state and local laws.

Following the law is 1 of the most important tips to remember as you learn how to run employment background checks. Don't forget to check your state or municipal'south laws as well, as some states have boosted rules and regulations for conducting pre-employment groundwork checks.

Do empathize the difference betwixt consumer reports and reference checks.

A consumer report can contain data from a variety of sources and databases such as credit reports, criminal tape searches, and employment verifications.

These are very unlike from a reference check or "reference interview". Reference interviews dig deeper than data-entry cloth and can help uncover information such as unexplained gaps in employment and reveal any inaccuracies reported on a resume.

By checking and interviewing references, yous can appraise the applicant's work history and capabilities. However, it'southward of import to remain compliant with privacy and equal opportunity laws.

Don'ts

Don't ask about a candidate's character when checking employment references.

While conducting references checks tin be used to help protect your business against the wrong rent, it'southward of import to be objective with your questions.

Practise not ask a former employer near an applicant's character or anything that could be rendered subjective;. In that location are still fact-based questions you can enquire which can lend you better insight into their demeanor in the workplace.

For example: What was the private's role at your organisation, and what was your human relationship to them? How would you describe the individual's piece of work standards? Would this individual be eligible for rehire?

Don't change your background cheque policies on a candidate-by-candidate footing.

Make sure you universally apply your pre-employment screening policy across all roles of your organization, categorized by their title or job position.

Don't only look for negatives.

When learning how to do background checks for employment, it's important to call back to review a host of different data. Companies can lose out on not bad employees past focusing on only one particular instead of evaluating a number of sources. Background checks are inherently used every bit a ways of gathering negative information to protect against bad hires, but try to locate positive attributes likewise. Seek for positive patterns of beliefs as a defensible method for hiring decisions, as one practiced or mad deed should not define a person'south graphic symbol or work ethic. Looking for positives too equally negatives can help y'all meliorate decide between ii candidates.

Don't forget to communicate.

Fifty-fifty if your candidate doesn't formally protest a pre-adverse action notice, you should requite them the opportunity to explicate any misconceptions or mistakes. Engaging in a face-to-face chat tin resolve many potential reporting errors, and some people who might take made a single bad mistake in their past may still deserve and opportunity to redeem themselves. Ever communicate and apply your best judgment.

Don't employ "the box"

Our final tip on what not to practice equally you lot learn how to do pre-employment background checks, is to not use "the box". The question on job applications which inquire if the candidate has always been convicted of a crime tin be considered firsthand discrimination, and the EEOC forth with several states have attempted to ban the box altogether. Avoid the question so you can consider all applicants equally, and then run a broad and consistent background cheque afterward.

Conclusion

There are several pre-employment screening services to consider, just small business owners stand to benefit from a convenient, reliable, online screening service such equally ShareAble for Hires. ShareAble for Hires delivers fast, reliable, and comprehensive results with credit and criminal reports and identity verification. You go results in minutes so you have the data you need to brand a well-informed determination fast.

*Instant criminal results not available for Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, South Dakota, Utah, Washington DC, and Wyoming.