User:Backgroundchecks

Employment screening means, essentially, checking out a job candidate's background. Is the person who he or she claims to be, with the qualifications stated in the resume or job application? Does the candidate have any criminal convictions or other disqualifying qualities or issues?It's easy to get employment screening done nowadays - a few mouse clicks will get you an online report on just about anybody via one of the hundreds of Web-based employment screening companies out there. But, frankly, many of the screening services being offered online are cursory and, well, unreliable at best. Are you sure you're really getting a valid, reliable screening report? Will it stand up to scrutiny if a legal issue (e.g., God forbid, a lawsuit) ever happens to your company? To judge this, you need to know a little about employment-related background checking, which is what this brief article is about.First, you should be aware that pre-employment screening in the U.S. is closely regulated by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and various state employment laws. The law does of course permit employers to conduct background checks on potential employees, but employers are required to disclose in writing to the job applicant that they intend to do so, and if an ?adverse action? is taken due to information found in the background check (i.e., the person is not hired), then the employer has to inform the applicant of this and disclose the specific unfavorable information uncovered.Oftentimes, such unfavorable information consists of a criminal records finding. A thorough pre-employment check should always include a comprehensive criminal records search. If your job candidate has been convicted of fraud or other serious crimes in the past, this is obviously relevant to your employment decision (although the law requires you to consider each case of a criminal record finding on an individual basis in terms of its seriousness and job relevancy.)It's also important to be aware that many ?third-party? pre-employment screening services (especially Web-based companies) do a less-than-adequate job of searching criminal records. They simply don't cast a wide enough net in their searches. Most conduct criminal records searches only in the state-of-residence or even just the county-of-residence of the job applicant. So your applicant may have a fraud conviction, or even a lengthy rap sheet, in another state, but come up clean on the pre-employment check.Many people with criminal records are quite aware of this shortcoming, and simply move out-of-state when jobhunting.That's why your screening company should run a national database criminal records search as part of the screening process. Unfortunately, the best national criminal records databases currently available to the public are incomplete. They omit data from numerous counties across the country and sometimes contain out-of-date data. So it's important to supplement the national database criminal records search with onsite searches at county courthouses in your job applicant's counties-of-residence. All reputable pre-employment screening agencies have this capability.Accepting your screening agency's ?standard? pre-employment screening report, if it checks for criminal records only in your applicant's state-of-residence, is clearly inadequate. Your otherwise-impressive applicant may have a history of serious fraud convictions or other crimes in another state. You can access public records on your job applicant or employee which are scattered nationwide in minutes. Give it a try and you'll soon wonder why you never made full use of public records as an employment-screening tool before!

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