Background Checks & Pre Employment
Screening Program
You should have a written
pre-employment screening and or background check policy
in place that communicates standards and guidelines for
screening and hiring. The human resource department can
then with consistency and accuracy support your organization.
Background Checks:
It’s hard to find good help these days. More importantly,
it’s hard to be the person responsible for hiring
that “good help.” We put our lives in the
hands of people we don’t know everyday. We trust
them to make honest decisions, to have our well being
in mind and to sacrifice their personal desires to accommodate
our own. Let’s say you are the person in charge
of hiring new employees. How in the world can you be sure
that the person you are hiring is not only able to perform
the tasks you need, but also that they are trustworthy
enough to be left alone to do it?
The answer is – you can’t. You never
know what a person will do. But you can know what a person
is capable of doing and what may have motivated him/her
in the past. Background Checks are an effective tool to
research a potential employee’s motivations and
past actions. When used properly, they assist employers
in carefully delegating authority by providing information
they might otherwise have overlooked.
Background Checks can reveal a person’s motivations
and accomplishments. Screening provides previous employment/work
history, job titles, dates of employment, education, training,
certifications, and references. Employers can confirm
that an applicant is indeed, for example, a certified
Occupational Therapist and not just a fabulous résumé
composer and interviewer. To aid in information verification
employers should consider having written pre-employment
screening and background check policy. Such policy communicates
standards and guidelines for screening and hiring. With
policy in place, the Human Resource department can then
with consistency and accuracy support an organization
by confirming that provided information is truthful and
accurate.
Screening can also show what is in a person’s credit
and motor vehicle reports, verify a person’s Social
Security number and reveal his/her criminal history. Obviously,
an employer might be leery of hiring a person with fifteen
moving violations to drive a delivery truck. Or, it might
be foolish to ask a person with terrible credit history
to make all the financial decisions for a company. Background
Checks help employers to avoid delegating tasks to employees
that may lead them to engage in unlawful activities. Putting
people in positions that have tempted or been difficult
for them in the past can be harmful to employer or employee
alike.
Be aware however, employers need to check state laws for
employment screening to verify what information can and
cannot be used when deciding whether or not to hire an
individual. Employers must become familiar with the Federal
Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and follow the standards
for employment screening set by the FCRA. If, for some
reason, information from a Background Check is used by
an employer for adverse action, by law there are several
steps an employer must perform. For example, an employer
must provide the applicant with a copy of the report and
an explanation of their rights under the FCRA. They must
also provide a notice that the applicant has the right
to dispute the information reported. Employers must follow
the standards for employment screening set by the FCRA.
In the end, employers are responsible for protecting themselves,
their businesses and their customers. Background Checks
are one of the many tools employers have to aid them in
building an honest, able and safe work environment.
For more information regarding Background Check screening
including finding accurate, current information and understanding
the background screening laws for your state, contact
Corporate Security Counsel at 316-305-1994.
Corporate Security Counsel LLC., is a Company that provide Security Services such as Policies,
Procedures, Audits, Screening, & Assessments for Businesses
