In today's competitive job market, businesses must take every measure possible to ensure they are making potential hires. One way to do smart hiring is by conducting thorough background checks on potential employees. While some may view this step as unnecessary, background checks can benefit employers and employees in many ways.

Background checks help companies make informed hiring decisions and provide transparency during the interview. 

In this article, we will explore how implementing background checks can improve your company's hiring practices while saving time and resources. 

Ways to enhance your hiring process with background checks

Background checks allow hiring managers to verify if potential employees possess the necessary skills and qualifications required for their role.

For example, background checks can check whether the requirements have been met or not to fill a position. It saves time that you can spend on reviewing resumes and conducting interviews without a clear idea of a candidate's qualifications.

Additionally, background checks can alert you to inconsistencies in a candidate's application materials. False-listed references, exaggerated work experiences, or academic achievements can indicate a problematic employee. However, background checks aim to show the exact individual's professional history.

Prevent Negligent Hiring Claims: Conducting detailed pre-hire investigations via background checks helps protect your organization from potential harm caused by new hires with questionable past behavior.

Identifying issues beforehand minimizes the risks of negligence. Thorough screenings also give you more flexibility when selecting candidates. It allows you to make well-informed choices rather than being forced to pick someone based on availability.

Background checks provide essential information about candidates' character traits, jobs performed, criminal histories, credit ratings, driving record histories, and educational attainments.

These assessments often include drug tests and physical evaluations too. Background checks enable employers to see warning signs ahead of time, enabling them to either terminate discussions with specific prospects or use discovered knowledge. This helps employers to create tailored plans that best accommodate new workers after hire.

Enhance Security Measures: Background verification is not just essential for individual candidates; it plays a vital role in building businesses’ reputations and establishing their professional image. It helps an organization prove they care deeply about integrity and take its responsibilities seriously.

A consistent track record of conducting detailed background checks creates a strong perception of reliability and professionalism among stakeholders. Background checks ultimately boost public confidence in the firm.

Establish Credibility and Professionalism: Implementing background checks contribute positively to the company's image. They showcase responsible leadership dedicated to promoting a stable and safe atmosphere.

Performing background checks says a lot about an organization and how serious it is to protect its employees. Applicants perceiving transparent processes feel valued and help the company grow. This positive impression facilitates better cooperation between companies and those seeking opportunities under them.

Reduce Bias Hiring: Even though company leaders are unbiased during the hiring process, sometimes unconscious bias can reject potential candidates.
Choosing the right background check providers can help you stay inclusive and unbiased throughout the process. A few ways to select a background check provider are as follows:

  • Record Filtering: Helps in filtering unconscious bias decision-making during hiring.
  • Automated Adjudication: This can help businesses remove human bias and can help companies hire potential candidates.
  • Individual Assessments: Ensure that the provider helps candidates by giving them authority to explain the circumstances if they have any criminal record against them. 

Scalable Screening Process: Background check help companies improve the quality of hire and help you grow exponentially. For example, background check providers may offer the checks such as employment verification or identity checks that can help you know if the candidate is a good fit or not for the job.

Screen Out Unqualified Candidates: One primary advantage of conducting background checks in the hiring process is that they can quickly screen out unqualified candidates who might otherwise waste valuable time and resources. By checking previous work experience, education, and credentials, you can narrow down your list of qualified applicants and eliminate those who are not a good fit. Screening saves you time and helps you reduce bad hires, which cost companies money.

Increase Due Diligence: Conduct background verification processes on all potential hires to avoid believing the undesirable or fraudulent claims made by applicants. Screening provides crucial insights into people’s real identities, education credentials, professional experience, criminal records, and financial health among other factors.

Streamline Time-to-Hire Processes: Companies can execute background checks without adding unnecessary delays. Quick turnaround times keep great talent warm while ensuring the timely completion of routine procedures.

Background checks allow hiring managers to verify if potential employees possess the necessary skills and qualifications required for their role. For example, if you are looking to fill a position requiring advanced degrees or certifications, background checks can confirm whether these requirements have been met. 

Ensure Legal Compliance: Regular background reviews can prevent you from getting into trouble that is caused by negligence while hiring a candidate. By following relevant legislative directives regarding equal opportunity employment, data privacy protection, and fair labor standards, among others, an enterprise can stay within authorized parameters, thus reducing exposure to fines. Knowingly violating guidelines may lead to severe consequences affecting the business and its proprietors. 

Strengthen Compliance Obligations: Companies must follow legal requirements, industry regulations, and corporate governance expectations. As per laws, companies must do a deep background review of personnel before hiring them. This way, the company avoids facing punishments, penalties, and harm to its reputation caused by failing to follow the rules.

Overall, background checks are crucial tools integral to modern hiring practices. They play valuable roles in reducing workplace damages associated with uncertain or problematic new candidates.

An efficient background investigation increases accountability, enables informed choices, promotes peace of mind, and elevates organizational credibility. Employers have nothing to lose but much to gain from adopting human resource policies incorporating wise background check usage.

 

Information that is included in a background check report

Background check reports contain a summary of the findings of the investigation conducted by the company performing the search. Depending on the specific industry and regulatory requirements, a background screening report could include the following information:

  • Identifying Details: The user's full name, date of birth, Social Security Number, physical and email addresses, phone numbers, and other contact details. These details would allow you to verify the candidate’s identity.
     
  • Criminal History: This section would disclose criminal court records indicating whether the applicant was convicted of crimes at the state or federal levels. If no records are found, the background check would reflect “no adverse criminal history.”
     
  • Court Records: With cases ranging from small claims disputes to large offense arrests, county criminal record reports cover a broader scope of activity than state repositories. But county courts also tend not to store digital versions of files longer than 3–5 years, making physical retrieval more cumbersome than electronic storage systems used at larger agencies like DPS databases.
     
  • Driver's License Verification: For those involved in commercial driving, Commercial Driver's License Information System (CDLIS) provides information regarding license issuance, current status, disqualifications, suspensions, revocations, and expirations nationwide.
     
  • Licensing Board Disciplinary: Ensure professionals holding licenses related to healthcare professions, accounting, real estate agents, financial advisors, contractor licenses, bar memberships, and more must have a clean background.
     
  • Fraudulent Identity Prevention: Multi-factor authentication through digital signatures or Know Your Customer (KYC) identification services validate the authenticity and prevent fraudulent social security numbers used during application processes. 

But then there are a few things that you can only know after hiring a candidate and can not be found on the background check report. 

Here are a few things that are not included in the background check report.

  • Personal opinions, attitudes, beliefs, or behavior: Personal characteristics such as honesty, dependability, attitude toward work, and communication style are not found through background checks.
    However, these traits are critical to evaluating whether someone will fit well with your culture and colleagues. This may take additional effort and observation through interviews, reference checks, or trial periods to check someone on these dimensions.
     
  • Cultural compatibility: It is crucial to determine whether a candidate shares similar cultural views as the rest of your team. It includes shared norms and behaviors around communication styles, decision-making processes, conflict resolution, and general social etiquette.
     
  • Interpersonal skills: How effectively someone communicates, builds rapport, and collaborates with coworkers is crucial in most organizations today. Conducting group assessments, incorporating feedback, using role-play exercises, and observing body language in conversations all help evaluate these soft skills.
     
  • Emotional intelligence: Self-awareness, empathy, resilience, stress management, and impulse control—are part of EQ (Emotional Quotient) and are essential abilities required across nearly every occupation. To know the EQ of a candidate, you can ask open-ended questions designed to bring up situations where they had to manage difficult emotions or conflicts.
     
  • Informal networks and connections: Traditional background checks tend to focus mainly on formal education and professional training rather than informal learning and networking.
    To truly understand how connected someone is, consider looking at their LinkedIn profile, asking questions during interviews, or observing their behavior over time. Building a network of experts and mentors can greatly benefit long-term career success and can also provide benefits to your organization.
     
  • Potential to learn quickly and adapt: Background checks do not tell us about a candidate's ability to learn and grow rapidly in a particular field. Assessing this quality often requires a combination of analytics, testing, assessments, performance evaluations, subject-matter-expert feedback, and self-reflection.

    Some innovative approaches involve leveraging competency models, micro-credentials, and gamified simulations. Examining the breadth of someone's interests outside of work, curiosity, and willingness to try new things can be seen as a positive signal.

Also Read: Now You Have No More Excuses To Skip Background Checks

 

To conclude:

The process of conducting a background check should balance effectiveness and efficiency while minimizing bias. Implementing background checks into your hiring process offers numerous advantages. These include employee protection, reduction of legal liabilities, better quality hires, verified credentials, and enhancing company reputation. It provides transparency around your hiring policy, benefiting both the employee and the organization in the long run.

Additionally, background checking is crucial, especially when dealing with sensitive information like financial records, customer personal details, access control systems, etc. Also, it becomes vital when selecting people who represent your brand i.e. external facing roles such as Sales consultants, account executives, delivery drivers, etc.

If you are looking for background check services, EmployeePast is here for you. EmpoyeePast offers the most authentic background check services that are highly flexible, secure, and cost-effective.