Employment Screening Background
Checks: A General Overview
Background checks are essential when used as a form of the pre-employment screening process. Through this, employers can find out if candidates have criminal, financial or employment history.
Employment Screening Background Check involves employers going more profound than what candidates claim in their resumes and what they say in an interview. As a result of the limited job vacancies, candidates are liable to hide some vital information about their past or cook up lies in their resumes to make them qualified for the job.
Research carried out by Society for Human Resource Management proves that 50 per cent of resumes contain false information which serves as enough reason for employers to want to conduct a background check.
A background check not only gives the employer more information about his employees, but it can also ultimately save the company time, stress and money when it comes to hiring.
The Department of Commerce in the U.S has identified employee theft as the cause of business failure while the Department of Justice proved that workplace violence is the cause of 18 percent of all violent crimes and 60 percent of negligent hiring accounts for Jury awards of average damage of $600,000.
Before running a background check, employers should endeavor to ask for the applicant’s consent, and they must not use any information received to discriminate as this would violate the Federal law.
It is also essential that an employer should find out what information will be available alongside what information they are allowed to look into as this can vary from state to state.
Employers are also required by law never to make a hiring decision based on the applicant's sex, religion, disability, race, origin and any other genetic information.
It is also required that employer's get the employee's written permission before doing the background check.
Also, it must be known to the applicants that the company will use any information received to decide on the employability. This notice must be written and must not be written on an employment application.
The employees must also certify that the company the report will be received from, that the employer has notified him or her and they have their permission. It must be further stated that the employer has complied with all the requirements and that they will not misuse any information received or discriminate against the person.
Finally, a background check can take longer to process, it depends on the information you seek. The faster the process, the more error it is likely to contain.
