Pre Employment Background Check: The Definitive Guide
Lack of in-house recruiting team might lead to poor hiring.
Such a hiring can decrease the workplace morale & might cause other grave concerns for the organization.
But, with proper pre-employment background check, you can avoid such situations and easily improve your quality of hire.
Let’s discuss this concept in detail.
What Do You Mean by Pre-employment Background Check?
Pre-employment background check or pre-employment background screening is a solution provided by a service provider or an organization, who collects and verifies the information about a potential employee.
It involves checking the background details like educational details, pre-employment assessment, social security number, criminal history, public record screening, drug test etc.
Such a background check also determines whether the candidate is fit to handle sensitive/confidential information or not.
How to Conduct Pre-employment Background Investigations?
While performing a background check, organizations will hire pre employment background check companies like EvalRight, to perform the required checks.
Once the third-party service providers get the contract to check a candidate’s background, they will start checking the candidate’s profile, his/her past, nationality, past organization’s performance and social behavior.
Once all these checks are finished, the service provider will report all data immediately to the proper authority, along with proof of inaccuracy (if possible).
Why is it Important to Conduct Pre-employment Background Investigations?
This pre-employment check has become a significant part of the hiring process, as this helps the hiring manager to identify the right candidate seamlessly.
Let us understand the importance of conducting pre-employment background investigations.
#1. Enhances The Hiring Quality:
The majority of organizations struggle to conduct a planned talent acquisition process.
But it is essential to extract suitable candidates with precision.
This is where pre-employment screening and investigation plays a significant role in determining the right candidate.
Since a dedicated team of professionals performs this, it dramatically increases the quality of hire.
#2. Improves Productivity:
Through pre-employment screening (or) background checks, organizations can precisely gauge whether the employee holds the proper skills mentioned in their resume and fits in the profile for which the hiring was going.
Choosing the right candidate by doing a proper background check also enhances the team’s potential to work, ultimately enhancing the organization’s working productivity.
#3. Reduces The Employees’ Turn-over Rate:
With the help of background checks, organizations can enhance hiring quality.
This screening process will provide your organization with a clear picture of the candidate and associated details to make sure that the employees are less likely to leave the organization or abruptly quit the role.
#4. Establishes Safer Workplace:
Organizations often face challenges when an unfit employee misbehaves or tries to pollute the work environment with abrupt activities.
To reduce the odds of violence in the workplace, organizations should perform a thorough background check of the candidates at the time of hiring.
Eliminating such candidates by checking their previous records and other social behavior gives organizations an upper hand to stay away from office odds through violence in the workplace.
#5. Maintains Regulatory Compliance:
Every organization should perform a candidate’s background check while staying compliant with certain rules and regulations.
Hiring a third-party organization can help prevent the organization from any kind of compliance violation while performing background checks.
Through such a screening process, organizations can legally extract information about a potential employee/candidate.
Best Practices for Pre-employment Background Checks:
#1. Determine The Nature & Scope of Screening:
Organizations that perform pre-employment background screening must specify key pointers that they are looking for through this checking process.
Based on the organization’s requirements, the background screening firm should proceed to look for various details about the candidate.
Otherwise, it becomes costly and time-consuming to perform a complete background check.
Outlining the necessary detail, such as the employee’s educational background, work history, criminal records, past behavior, credit report, etc., are essential.
#2. Take Written Permission From Applicants:
According to Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), it is a good practice to notify employees about the background check and acquire written consent from potential hires before conducting the background screening process.
The organization which is hiring should inform the candidates that their background information will be accumulated from thorough searches through different sources, to make the hiring decision more effective.
#3. The Background Process Should Have Consistency:
Every background screening process must remain consistent for all applicants.
Mandating the background check for some candidates while not for others will surely invite trouble to the organization, and it might end up in the legal drifts of discrimination.
Discrimination mainly occurs when certain applicants have anything to do with gender, race, disability, religion, age, state they belong to, etc.
Therefore, organizations should treat all candidates equally and fairly to avoid violating any kind of federal non-discrimination laws.
#4. Try Hiring a Third Party to Perform Background Checks:
Many companies prefer to perform background checks in-house, which is okay if the background screening process is not hampering the regular workflow or core operations of the business.
But, often, such screening process requires extra manpower and processes.
Therefore, organizations prefer to opt for a third party organization to perform the background check.
That eliminates the unnecessary burden of hiring new applicants, keeping in mind specific regulations, hiring procedures, ethics, etc., and it smoothens the hiring process.
What Causes a Red Flag on a Background Check?
Red flags are warning signs and factors that organizations set as per their policies.
Some of them are discrepancies, criminal records, odd behavior etc.
Both the candidates and the third-party background screening providers need to understand the most common red flags an organization follows to better filter out the right candidates during the hiring process.
Some other well-known red flags (warnings) that service providers should consider are as follows:
#1. Missing or Fake Job Positions:
Missing jobs or fake past job descriptions should alert service providers to render a thorough check of the candidate’s background and past employment details.
Also, candidates might have a justification for the missing information and organizations should listen to their point of view as well.
#2. Consistent Short-lived Jobs:
When a candidate has numerous short-lived jobs, it can raise doubts & concerns to the organization.
While seasonal jobs, internships, or short-term jobs are totally acceptable as they provide an incredible amount of experience, applicants with constant shifting from one job to another might not be a good fit for the company.
Background checking service providers should consider it a sign of lay off or resign.
Such a pattern is also a red flag because it shows that the candidate gets easily bored or unhappy with his role.
#3. Failed Drug Test:
If a job involves driving a vehicle, operating critical machines, or other activities that require extreme caution, the pre-employment screening providers should consider performing drug testing as well.
Before carrying out the test, the organization should take permission from the applicant.
A failed drug test becomes a red flag because it indicates that the applicant could threaten the customers and internal/existing employees or pollute the workplace.
Conclusion:
We hope this blog has given a comprehensive view of the pre-employment background check, its importance and how organizations conduct this during the hiring process.
We have further highlighted the best practices to perform background checks, and various factors that might cause a red flag during the background check process.
Start your background verification right now – Get Free Quote