Part of the hiring process is examining a potential employee’s resume and having him or her come in for an interview. To verify that this potential employee is being honest, however, a background check needs to be done not only to check his or her employment and education history but also to check if he or she has a criminal record and, for executive-level or financial and government position, poor credit. Essentially, a pre-employment background check is done to see how accurate, stable, and reliable this and other potential employees are.
One important aspect of conducting a pre-employment background check after an interview is to make sure the potential employee has been honest about all of the information on his resume. As resume padding – or even outright dishonesty – can occur by candidates trying to make themselves more qualified from the rest of the applicant pool, verifying his or her employment and education history is one way to spot resume padding. A pre-employment background check report lists all previous employers and the dates that person was employed with each company, as well as his or her position. Education is similar, except for the years of study, major, and type of degree show up on the report. If a candidate claims to have earned a masters degree on his resume and that information is nowhere to be found in a background check – instead, the highest level of education he received was finishing a bachelors – he or she can be ruled out for being dishonest.
The other aspects of a background check include checking for a criminal record, driving record, credit history, social security number verification, and address information. All of this information is to check a candidate’s past history, such as whether he or she changed security numbers or went under a different name. However, checking for a criminal past is simply to verify whether, as if often listed on an employment application, a candidate has a criminal record.
While individually screening applicants can help with the decision of filing a position, overall, conducting pre-employment background checks on all candidates during the hiring process helps with avoiding a high turnover rate, theft, workplace accidents, embezzlement, and low morale from employees.