Background Screening

One of the many pieces of information you may choose to examine to determine the character and responsibility of an applicant is a credit report. It helps you learn about an applicant’s payment history, employment history, and offers other vital pieces of information you need to know before making a hiring decision. But applicants sometimes feel this is a violation of their privacy and oversteps the hiring process, so they are reluctant to provide access to this information.

BUREAU CREDIT REPORTS

A Credit Report from Intelifi gives you information about an applicant’s spending habits and their debt history. Some employers deemed this kind of report an invasion of privacy as well and choose not to use it. But it presents you with vital information that can help you make your hiring decision a little easier. When viewing a credit report certain information is concealed, and employers can only view information that is vital to the hiring process.

A Credit Report includes four types of information:

1) Personal Information

This includes the applicant’s name, address, social security number and other information that is considered to be available to the public. This helps make sure the report you are viewing belongs to the person for whom you are searching. It also helps you verify data provided on the application.

2) Payment and Credit Data

This shows where people shop, how much they spend, how debts are paid, if they are late with payments for student loans and more. The report also shows open lines of credit and whether they are current in status or not.

3) Who Else Has Obtained The Report

This shows which other businesses, employers or creditors have recently obtained a copy of the applicant’s credit report. This does not affect the applicant’s score, but it gives you insight into whether your applicant is applying with other employers or trying to obtain new lines of credit.

4) Court Judgments and Public Records

This includes information on public record, such as court judgments, bankruptcy proceedings, liens and other criminal records. Applicants are likely to be aware that negative information — such as a bankruptcy — remains on their public record for a period of seven to 10 years.

Experian Employment Insight

With the proper authorization, you may also run an employment related version of a credit report using the Employment Insight report provided by Experian. Employment Insight helps you make better employee hiring decisions by quickly and cost-effectively providing objective and factual credit information. Credit information provides insight into an applicant’s integrity and responsibility toward his or her financial obligations.
Get an objective picture of each applicant and enhance traditional employment decision-making tools by:

• Quickly verifying and expanding on information you receive from applicants and other sources
• Revealing conflicting information that may need further review or clarification
• Providing credit information that would normally not appear on an application but may have an impact on job performance

The Fair Credit Reporting Act, as amended by the Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act of 1996, allows users access to a consumer’s credit report for employment purposes. The law imposes several conditions on users who pull consumer reports for employment purposes (Experian’s Employment Insight report).