In this day and age companies are more liable than ever to get a background check. Companies have always been responsible for their actions and the actions of their employees but the era where companies had to worry about such things is a relatively recent phenomenon. To combat the dangers of hiring a bad egg, companies more and more are using pre-employment background screening to complement their interview process. But what are the advantages of pre-employment background screening? What are some of the ways that this helps employers feel confident and existing employees feel protected? Here are a few examples.
Bad Hiring Reduction: You know how they say; “…it was just the wrong fit…”? Increasingly that “wrong fit” scenario has become more and more the case. While you can never accurately predict the ways in which things are done at your business with certain people will rub a new employee the wrong way, you can make better guesses using pre-employment background screening. The fact is that this “wrong fit” situation not only costs companies time, it’s also increasingly costing them money. Turnover can also lead to theft, fraud, embezzlement, or these bad employees interacting with longtime customers; driving some of them away for good.
Fact Check Resumes: People fudge the facts on their resume and that’s generally not frowned upon. If you embellish a title or job duty that you had with a company, these are things which are generally glossed over in the way in which a potential employee presents themselves. But if you are reading the resume of an Ivy League graduate who has had all manner of experience including internships at the Met or certificate programs at the Pentagon, you may be blown away by this persons claimed-experience. Especially if you are doing hiring for a supervisor at a fast food restaurant. Pre-employment background screening not only allows you to fact check the phone numbers these applicants put down for their references, but it also allows you to find out where that lost three years went in their background. What were they really doing when their resumes said they were interning at NASA? Where did they actually went to school in the rolling hills of Connecticut when they said they were at Yale (Naugatuck Valley Community College)? Background checks not only keep employees honest they also help employers wean out the bad seeds.
Avoid Conflict: Violence in the workplace is something that no one wants to deal with. Lying about a criminal past is a crime. An estimated 10% of job applicants have some kind of a criminal record. Doing pre-employment background screening helps employers find out what is on the public records for the people they are thinking about hiring. This helps reduce potential future conflict in the workplace.
No one said hiring was easy. It’s actually something of a thankless job. But when hiring managers have an honest set of facts to work with this can help them draw questions around inaccuracies and pick the right person for the job.