Continual Background Screening
As a boss it is perfectly okay to trust your employees, especially when you have known them for a long time. In fact, if you can’t trust the employees that you have worked for you for some time then there is probably something wrong with you. Of course, it’s not a perfect science, but when you have employees that you have known for years, especially when you run a small business that only has a handful of employees; you should trust them to not only run your business correctly, but also stay out of trouble on the outside. With that said, though, you aren’t always able to interact with all of your employees on a daily basis. While it’s good to trust, it’s better to know, which is why it’s always good to do employment background checks on your new employees, but also to have a policy to perform continual background screening on all current employees. It’s not an invasion of privacy; it’s just making sure that your employees are upholding the standards that you have set.
Most employers do some sort of a background check when they hire employees for a job. Typically these background checks will show a prior arrest record, as well as any major financial issues that are worth noting. It’s not just about making sure that you don’t hire a murderer; it’s about making sure that you hire someone you can trust. If you find out that someone has three DUI arrests on their record you pretty much know that they aren’t reliable enough to be working at your business. Ditto if employment background checks show that they have drug arrests, or have massive amounts of debt they have been running from.
There are some companies out there who do employment background checks once every six months and a lot can change in six months. And while you hope that an employee will come clean about any issues they come up against, you also need to make sure that you have only the best working at your company. This isn’t just about making sure that your employees treat your customers well, but also that your other employees are safe. The last thing that you want is someone who has had four domestic violence reports in the last six months working on your staff.
Our software allows our clients to set dates on when they would like to re order a background check on a new hire. If you login in that day you will see a note pop up that you need to rescreen that employee.
We feel that our software is the best in the business and we will put our money where our mouth is and guarantee that we can provide a better service than what you are currently getting. Try us out and if you don’t like then you don’t pay anything.
2 Surefire Ways to Conduct Employee Background Checks
Lendio.com invited us to guest post on their blog about pre employment screening. Below is the article
Posted on October 26, 2011 by Dan Bischoff www.lendio.com
Note: This is a guest post by Matt Visser, President of VICTIG background screening. For many, hiring the right people will determine success or failure. In this post, Matt offers great advice into how to screen your employees to make sure you’re hiring great talent.
Criminal Records — The good, the bad, the ugly
There is no perfect way to do an employment criminal background check. Within the United States, there is very little continuity with how criminal records are handled, stored, and made available from city to city, county to county and state to state. A central repository with criminal records from all areas of the country does not exist.
The best way to do a criminal search should include three different components.
1. Nationwide criminal database or multi-jurisdictional database search
2. Social security trace or skip trace
3. County level criminal searches
Pre Employment Screening
As any business owner can tell you, part of running a successful business is hiring the right employees. Unfortunately, this is often one of the hardest parts of running a successful business too. For example, sometimes people do great interviews and have wonderful resumes, but turn out to be poor fits for the position once they have been hired. And that’s the best case scenarios. In the worst case scenarios, employers don’t learn about an employee’s criminal past (as an example) until after he or she has been hired. This is why pre employment screening is so important.
Basically, pre employment screening means checking out a potential employee’s credentials, criminal history, past employers, driving records, the list can go on and on. This can be as simple as making phone calls, or as detailed as doing a full background check like mentioned above. The depth of the screening really depends on the business owner. For example, a daycare owner would want to do a full background check, since the employee would be working with children. But a hotel owner might only need to check the person’s references; but again, most of the time it’s a matter of choice.
So, as a business owner, how do you know what type of pre employment screening to do? A good rule of thumb is to consider the position, and then ask yourself what you would want to know about the person who got the job. Would you want to know about any criminal behavior? Would you want to know about past job performance? How about driving records? You can also ask other business owners what types of screenings they do. Most business outsource pre employment screening and background checks to a third party. There are companies that do a good job and there are some that cut corners and don’t care about being thorough. We consider our company to be best screening company in the business not because we are over confident or arrogant but because we know we do the right type of searches and do compromise or cut corners to get business. We have tools and process that can decrease turnaround time and save companies a lot of money at the same time do a much better background check.
Whether you decide to do them on your own or hire someone else to do them, it’s extremely important to do pre employment screenings on all potential employees. This is the easiest way to learn more about a potential employee, and hopefully save yourself time and money by hiring the right person the first time. Not to mention that these screenings can protect you from hiring someone who isn’t who they claim to be.
Always Screen Applicants
Here is an article I found that is written to applicants with warnings about lying on their resumes. It is nice that they are warned but we all know that the statistics are true, around 30% of applicant do lie or mis represent themselves on their resumes and that is why you do background checks and pre employment screening.
“There can be serious consequences for mis representing yourself on your resume. Employers can fire hired workers who appear to have been dishonest on their resume. It can be easy for employers to catch individuals who have been deceitful about their past work and education experience. Companies have access to advanced technology making it easy to check all background information that has been supplied. It used to be hard for employers to verify dates, but now it has become something that can be verified with little work.
Estimates on the number of people who are untruthful on their resume is as much as 30%. It is important to look over your resume carefully and make sure that the dates you have put for your education and work experience are accurate. In addition, do not create phony positions for yourself. By mis representing yourself on your resume, you can get in trouble at your job. This information is usually check by a background screening company.. Also avoid exaggerating your knowledge of computers or languages. A company may ask you for special tasks that require in-depth knowledge in these areas.
Companies have become very efficient at analyzing the background information that employers supply. If you are hired for a job, but have information on your resume that is questionable, you are putting your current job and future career outlook in jeopardy. It is wise to avoid mis representing yourself on your resume by carefully going over your background and experience. Verify that all stated data correctly represents what you have done and achieved in the past. If you mention sales goals that you have reached make sure that the numbers are accurate.
Potential employers are looking for a worker that they can rely on. If they find out an employer that they hired has not been truthful, it will be very hard for them to trust that individual. For this reason, it is important to make sure that you are not mis representing yourself on your resume. If you do have some information on your resume that is not entirely correct, admit the mistake and make the necessary changes to it.”