Because employers want to minimize turnover and reduce liability risks, many companies now obtain information about a potential employee and their past before they hire them. Due to advances in technology made during recent years, it is no longer a hardship for employers to access background information on someone that they may consider hiring. Conducting background checks has become much more commonplace, and nowadays this procedure is often a routine part of the pre-employment screening process. Finding a licensed private investigator to perform pre-employment background checks is now as simple as accessing the internet itself. However, one caveat: you should always verify that you are using a licensed professional to conduct the employment screening for you. Beware of unlicensed information brokers who claim to offer cheap, instant background checks. They are doing nothing more than using search engines and old records, which often return nothing more than outdated and incomplete information.
Basic background checks generally provide information on the subject including criminal history, court records, address history, phone numbers, and drivers license information. Upon reviewing the report results, the employer can make sure that the candidate has been truthful on their written application, and ask questions about any discrepancies. This in itself can give the interviewer insight into how honest the candidate is and can bring to light any application information that has been falsified. Making sure that the applicant has not been convicted of a crime is often a main motive for conducting a pre-employment background check. If the job involves handling money or working with the public (especially if the person will be in contact with children), it is imperative to know that the candidate does not have a criminal history before a job is offered to them.
More detailed background checks can also be obtained that include employment history, education information, corporate affiliations, professional licenses, real property owned, and other asset information. Many investigation agencies can customize background checks to meet the specific needs of their clients. Background checks can vary from being very basic to being extremely in-depth and comprehensive. Employers will often want to find out about someone's personal reliability and stability. In these instances, they may choose to conduct a credit check in addition to conducting a basic background check.
While the policy of conducting background checks on potential employees is on the rise in corporate America, background checks are also being conducted more frequently by individuals who plan on hiring someone to do work in their home. Homeowners are conducting more and more background checks on people hired to perform work in their homes, especially if the person will be around children or given access to their home in their absence. Nannies, contractors, landscapers, house sitters, and handy men are a few examples of workers who are often "checked out" prior to being contracted for a job. To take it a step further, many independent contractors will even sometimes order background checks on themselves, so that they can show them to potential customers in order to put their minds at ease prior to hiring them.
Gone are the days when jobs were offered over a short personal interview and a handshake. With lawsuits abounding on issues ranging from sexual harassment to discrimination, corporate risk management has becoming a serious concern to human resource managers. Many corporations now consider the cost of conducting pre-employment background checks a necessary investment in order to reduce the chance of making a bad hiring choice that could come back to haunt them later. Companies who conduct background reports know that the price of running such a report is small when compared to the losses sustained by others who do not follow the same precautionary procedures. Millions of dollars are lost yearly by companies who invest time, training, and valuable company resources in employees who would not have been hired to begin with, if the company would have done their due diligence by conducting a pre-employment background check.
C.J. Sunderman Jr. is the owner of Civil Investigation Agency, Inc. (CIA) and is the publisher of http://www.ciainvestigations.info - He is a former law enforcement officer and has taught various courses in crime prevention and has been a licensed private investigator for over 25 years. C.J. is a licensed alarm contractor and is an expert in surveillance equipment and access control systems, and he also owns an alarm and access control company. He and his wife, who is also a licensed investigator, reside in North Florida.
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