How Important is a Pre-Employment Background Check in a Hiring Decision?

Pre-employment background checks aren’t a sign of mistrust or an invasion of privacy; they are an important step in finding the best employees and protecting your company from the risks that come with untrustworthy workers.

There are a number of important reasons for conducting pre-employment background checks, starting with the fact that 10 percent of job applicants have criminal records, so the checks can prevent crime and violent incidents from occurring at your workplace. Next, studies show that 40 percent of the resumes you receive contain inaccuracies, so performing background checks will prompt applicants to be more forthcoming about their records and credentials.

Pre-employment background checks are advantageous because they help employers analyze an applicant’s history based on information that doesn’t surface on a resume or in an interview.

The Importance of Background Verification

For Criminal History and Resume Verification

When it comes to criminal background checks, they detail an applicant’s criminal past, even if the offenses are relatively small, enabling companies to eliminate candidates with a criminal past, if they are concerned the violations will negatively affect the company, clients, or coworkers.

Background check companies conduct criminal investigations on state and national levels. They also verify employment, including the applicant’s employment history, dates of employment, salary, job duties, and eligibility for rehire. They also verify the applicant’s education history, from high school graduation to college and university attendance and trade school certification.

The background check companies can also perform credit reports, drug tests, and e-verify applicants to ensure they have a legal right to work in the U.S.

Reputation

The companies can also check an applicant’s social networking sites to ensure they don’t have objectionable pictures posted on their web pages or post distasteful content on their social networking sites.

As you can see, there are a number of important reasons pre-employment background checks are important and a wide range of data they collect. The bottom line is that pre-employment background checks are a good investment, because they reduce overall costs by preventing lawsuits stemming from employee actions, high turnover, and bad publicity. Pre-employment background checks from a respectable company is a sound business investment that makes perfect business sense.