Background Check

It is critical for employers to choose the right candidate for their organization because choosing an unsuitable candidate can cause many problems in the future. For this reason, a background check for employment is important. During the employment process, background checks involve confirming the information of job applicants with legal records. This concept, which includes information such as the identity of the job applicant, employment history, and educational status, helps reduce liabilities and eliminate uncertainty in the recruitment process.

It will benefit your company to have general information about the candidates who apply to your job posting, from their work experience to their sociocultural background. On the other hand, one of the final screening stages, called the "background check" might be the most crucial.

Missing the right candidate for your company may cause you to lose money and time. From this perspective, an employment background check makes you feel confident that your candidate is suitable for the role and your company in general.

What are background checks for employment?

Background checks for employment are the processes to confirm the information of candidates applying for an open position with official legal records. Including a background check in the hiring helps mitigate the risk arising from the employer's responsibilities and eliminates uncertainties in this process.

Nevertheless, some rules may vary from country to country for an organization to conduct a background check on the candidate as a prerequisite for employment. In other words, if the country a company is affiliated with has set a limit on this issue, that company can do the screening within those limits.

For instance, in the United States, you must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to conduct background checks on employees as a prerequisite for the hiring process. This federal law manages the creation and use of consumer reports as employment tools. In brief, the FCRA safeguards companies from accusations of unfair employment methods and job seekers from discrimination or privacy violations.

What Are the Benefits of Pre-employment Background Checks?

Hiring a new employee is a significant long-term investment in your organization. It is critical to make good use of this investment, which involves many resources. To protect your organization and its culture from such negativities, you must confirm the information, such as work history and educational status of the candidate applying to you. In this way, you can minimize the problems caused by the employees you employ in your organization. Here are some benefits you can get by a pre-employment background check:

Improving Job Application Quality

Improving job application quality, which is the first advantage of background checks, is significant for a company. Thanks to the benefits provided by background checks, candidates know that they will undergo this screening before being accepted for employment when applying to a company. In this way, those who intend to make false or incomplete information about themselves will be greatly discouraged.

Increasing Hiring Quality

Eliminating job candidates who are not suitable for your company and ensuring that the information on the candidates' resumes is correct will help you choose the best candidate.

Recruiters should only interview qualified and suitable candidates. At this point, creating a broad candidate pool is crucial. As an employer, eliminating candidates you find unsuitable will save you valuable time.

Preventing Negative Publicity and Expenses for the Organization

Before accepting a candidate for a new job posting for your organization, the background check process about that candidate allows you to detect a dishonest employee in advance. As a result of this determination, such candidates will avoid damaging your organization’s employer branding. Additionally, it prevents you from suffering financial losses due to negative publicity and fraud by employees with criminal records.

Creating and Maintaining a Safe Workplace

Many employers perform background checks to ensure the candidate is trustworthy. However, although this screening is essential in all sectors, it is more critical in fields interacting with more vulnerable people such as children, older people, or people with disabilities. Adverse events due to the wrong employee selection will likely cause more problems in such jobs.

Companies are responsible for creating and maintaining a safe workplace environment. An essential part of this is choosing the right employee. For example, workplace violence in your company due to negligence may cause you to lose both reputation and money. In such a case, victims may both make negative comments about you and file a lawsuit against you.

Reducing Employee Turnover

Hiring new employees and taking the time to train them is a very costly and labor-intensive task. When your employees quit, your effort and financial investment go to waste, causing a loss of money and time. In addition to this, high employee turnover undermines your company's reputation and, as a result, can alienate qualified candidates. For this reason, it would be the right move for your company to apply the best background check to the people you will hire first.

How to do a background check for employment?

Background checks are used when applying for jobs in many parts of the world. Although this process varies from country to country, it has a similar goal of finding the best candidate for the organization. For example, in the United States, the process works like this: Background checks authenticate the identities of applicants by searching court records or public records databases with data such as their date of birth and Social Security Number, which is a nine-digit number given to those living in the USA to verify their identity and access social security services. It is also possible to manually contact places such as professional organizations, previous workplaces, and educational institutions.

HR professionals usually manage these research processes by using a consumer reporting agency (CRA) or human resources information system (HRIS). Getting support from a background check company is another option. Besides, if you prefer to handle this job with the help of HRIS and want to get ideas on choosing the best HRIS software for your company, you can look at Hirex.

On the other hand, FCRA and state laws impose some restrictions on background checks in the United States, as we mentioned before. Therefore, preliminary research on this issue is crucial to avoiding legal risks.

What do Background Checks Show?

Background checks can cover a variety of areas, including:

• Identity

• Credit history

• Education history

• Work history

• Driving records

• Drug screening

• Medical records

• Social media profiles

There may be differences from location to location regarding what information is checked. For this reason, it would be best for you to research the guidelines depending on your location.

What Could Cause a Background Check to be Denied?

Finding a red flag during a background check should not automatically eliminate a good candidate. Better results will be achieved if employers communicate openly to the candidates any questions they may have about the candidates and wait for an answer from them.

Here are some situations that might be a red flag for background check:

• Criminal history

• Inconsistencies between CV and background information

• Negative comments about the candidate in the reference checks from the previous workplace

• Illegal and inappropriate social media activities

In the United States, by FCRA standards concerning adverse action, you must give candidates their reports' copies and have a process for asking them to object to conclusions reports.

Conclusion

Background checks are critical for protecting and developing your organization from many risks in every aspect. Screening does not just help you select the right candidate for your organization. That also supports you in many matters, such as providing a safe work environment, complying with the law, and protecting your employer branding.

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