Learn How to Research Pre-Employment Screening Services to Determine Employee Suitability

By Kevin Richards

Doing business in modern times involves dealing with matters of operating expenses, marketing strategy, profitability, and most importantly, hiring people you can trust and who are suitable for the job. There is always an imminent chance of negligence, injury or criminal activity with newly hired employees without proper pre-employment screening procedures in place. Here we discuss how to avoid negligent hiring lawsuits using a background check for employment for new job applicants.

Let's move through the steps of determining the characteristics of a reliable service to run an online background check for employment.

  1. Ensure your application requires all the necessary information about the applicant to run a complete background check. Other than the usual data: name, address, work history, schools attended, you should ask for obscure items such as aliases, name changes, distinguishing body marks, work licenses and prior convictions.
  2. A good background service will clearly indicate on it's website that access to reports are "instant" upon payment. Those reports should be delivered in a clear, easy-to-understand format for your convenience.
  3. While there is no background service that covers every U.S. citizen, it is estimated that 90% of all U.S. citizens have some type of public record(s) attached to their name. These include birth, school, work license, lien, bankruptcy, marriage and divorce records. This ensures that if an individual were trying to hide anything it would be clearly shown in public and civil records. The background service you choose should clearly state that it is "all-inclusive" in obtaining and providing all of this data in the final report that will be delivered to you.
  4. A good background service will draw upon 2 or more sources to cross-reference this data with up-to-date and accurate results. This will bring you peace of mind knowing the information you are using to determine hiring eligibility is of the highest integrity.
  5. Don't take any website you come across at face value. Use opinion and review sites to gain valuable consumer feedback on which background services deliver on their promises.
  6. The final step of the screening process is to verify the information provided by the applicant and make an informed hiring decision.
Required Tools:
Your applicants will need to sign a disclosure agreement granting permission to run a full background check according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
You will want to acquire as much pertinent information as possible from the applicant; name, address, schools attended, work history, other names and aliases, etc.
Quick Tips:
A background check for employment should involve instant access to reports disseminating from the all levels of public databases; county, state, federal court records. This includes inmate, arrest and warrant records as well.
Be certain this is not a "one-time" background search. If you are frequently hiring employees or want to access records in the future use a subscription-based service so that you have further access and can cancel at anytime.
As an employer, there are restrictions on what information you can use to base your decision for not hiring an employee. Previous arrest records that did not result in convictions is a common example.
Useful Links:
Where Can I Run a Background Check for Employment?
What is the Best Background Check Service?