When it comes to hiring new employees the goal is to find the candidate with the right qualifications and integrity to do the job. However, there are some things that a resume and interview may not tell you. Which is why you need to perform a background check.
One of the biggest reasons to conduct a background check on a potential employee is safety and security. Employers are obligated to provide a safe work environment. This means that the workplace needs to be free of known hazards. Therefore, if you were to hire a person with violent tendencies, that could have been prevented with due diligence, this would be a dereliction of your responsibility. For this reason, employers should conduct, at the very least, a criminal bpss clearance background check on potential employees before finalizing an offer of employment.
There are several background check sites that you can use to access a person’s criminal history as well as their employment history and other information you may need. However, in spite of the very good reasons for conducting an employee background check, there are restrictions on what an employer can find and use:
- Consent is necessary
To perform a credit check or other background check, you need the consent of your candidate. If you don’t get consent, and depending on the type of check, the check may be illegal. In addition, if you’re accessing a potential employee’s credit rating as part of a background check you need to have a legitimate business reason for doing so. If not, this can be seen as a form of discrimination. Furthermore, even if you have a valid reason for checking a person’s credit score, you must be sure to follow the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) rules.
- Don’t mistake an arrest for a conviction
It’s important not to decide on a candidate based solely on arrest records. An arrest is not the same thing as a conviction. Furthermore, some groups may be unduly affected by a policy that eliminates any potential employee who has been arrested. This would then make the policy discriminatory.
- Know the laws
Before beginning any background check, it’s important to be aware of the federal, state and local laws that restrict the type of information that an employer can look for.
- If you do it for one, do it for all
If you’re going to perform a background check for one applicant you need to conduct a background check for all applicants. You can perform background checks after you’ve made a shortlist of candidates, but you cannot perform screenings only on people of specific groups, like immigrants and minorities. Make sure you are consistent in your hiring process for every open position.
- Be careful of uncovering protected class information
A background check may provide information that discloses that an employee is part of a protected class. Whether or not this information will be used in the hiring process, it’s risky for you to have this information because it opens you up to the possibility of a discrimination claim. This is why many employers use third-party services to perform background checks. These service providers will only give you information that is applicable to the hiring process.
- Allow the candidate to give more information
When you discover something in a background screening, it’s a good idea to give your candidate an opportunity to provide more information about the situation. Although you need to be consistent in how you handle the information from background checks, there’s always a possibility that a mistake has been made or else there were extenuating circumstances that could change your perception of the situation.
- Be relevant
Any background check you perform should be relevant to the job you are hiring for. For instance, you don’t need to access someone’s driving record if the job doesn’t involve driving for the company.
Background checks can’t predict future behavior but they can provide a degree of assurance about the person you’re thinking about hiring. At the very least you should conduct a criminal records check and an employment history check. Just make sure that you treat every candidate the same. If you do a criminal check on one candidate you must do it on all the others as well.