Every good business prescreens potential employees. However, due to state and federal regulations, performing a background check on someone isn’t as simple as typing that person’s name into Google and seeing what comes up. In fact, doing that might expose you and your employer to a lawsuit. Today, we’re going to show you how to do a safe, legal, and accurate background check on any potential employee:
Most companies work with a background check service to determine the eligibility of a job candidate. This is done for a number of different reasons. Background check services come with all of the following advantages:
These three benefits are undervalued in the world of business. Using the wrong piece of information to make a hiring decision could expose a company to a multimillion dollar lawsuit. And spending hours contacting government databases and courthouses is not an efficient use of anybody’s time. When considering the time and costs involved with a manual background check, they’re not nearly as expensive as you may think. Whether you’re the owner of a small business or a human resource manager at a large corporation, background check services like USAIntel have long been the best way to protect companies while providing safe and accurate information about potential employees.
While background check services are the most popular way to verify information about a potential employee in the United States, there’s nothing to prevent anyone from performing their own background check on a potential employee. Before you proceed, you should be aware that performing a manual background check is time-consuming, legally dangerous, and expensive. When you perform a manual background check, you don’t have to pay a background check service. However, you may have to pay fees to access various government records. In the state of California, for example, it costs $18 to obtain a birth certificate and $14 to obtain a death certificate. However, if you do choose to proceed with a manual background check, here are some of the records you can legally access and use when assessing the job worthiness of an employee: -Search social networks like Facebook or Twitter to find the profiles of the prospective job candidate. Use the information on these profiles to decide whether or not the individual would be a good addition to the company. Also consider searching other lesser known social networking sites. -Search for the employee under the National Sex Offender Registry database. If that individual appears in the database, he or she has been convicted of a sex crime. -If driving is involved in the job, obtain a driving record from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. This can be done either through the mail or by walking into a nearby office. To discover how to legally obtain driving records for prospective employees in your state, click here for the official DMV.org website. -Call educational institutions to verify the prospective employee’s certificates, degrees, experience, and any other education-related information disclosed on the resume. -Call past employers to verify the employment status of the prospective employee.
Whether you order a background check service or obtain a manual background check, you always need to receive the permission of the prospective employee. No matter what kind of information you’re searching for, that person always needs to sign an authorization form consenting to the search. Once the prospective employee has signed an authorization form, you are free to perform all of the tasks we’ve listed above.
Performing a background check on a potential employee isn’t difficult. The best and most accurate way to perform a background check is to combine basic manual searching with detailed background checks performed by a professional service. Manual background checks are not an ideal way to pre-screen a potential employee. They expose companies to liability and are time-consuming and inefficient. However, by combining some basic aspects of manual searching – like a Facebook and Twitter search – with background check services, you can effectively pre-screen potential employees and protect your company.