I ran into an interesting situation the other day involving background checks, specifically an employee background check, not pre-employment screening.

We had an associate guilty of employee theft.  It was a pretty open and shut case. We followed our company procedures to the letter, and the end result was that we terminated this employee. She was not prosecuted, but we did require restitution to be paid to us to make up for the losses she incurred.

We didn’t think much else about it. In an unrelated matter, or so we thought, a few months later we were in the process of promoting one of our employees to a management position. This individual would have keys to the building, safe codes and alarm codes.

As per our policy, we ran an employee background check before the promotion was granted. One of the points on the background check is address verification. As it turns out, the employee’s current address was different than the one we had on file from his application.

That wasn’t such a big deal. People move all the time and in the world of direct deposit paychecks, we are not always notified when someone moves. The problem was that this employee had moved in with the previous employee we had terminated for theft.

We now needed to question the judgment of our employee. If they were in a relationship with the employee who had been stealing, what are the chances that our newly promoted manager might not exert some sort of revenge once they had carte blanche access to our store?

Had it not been for the employee background check, we never would have questioned this employee or his motives.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547 

 

Where would I be in my life if it weren’t for employee background checks? It is hard to say. I know that I have been quickly approved for housing rentals because of my good background checks. I know that I can easily be approved for a loan or a credit card for those same reasons. So why would I think any differently about an employee background check?

For some companies it is a critical part of the decision making process to run and evaluate an employee background check. There is so much that can be scored or measured as far as credit worthiness (important if your employee will have access to cash or monetary funds). Even potential litigation or other liabilities can be foreseen through a criminal background check (is your employee going to work with children or somewhere with minimal supervision?)

Much of the criteria in pre-employment screening can point an employer in the right direction in a hiring decision. As a smart employee, I understand just how invaluable it has been for me to ensure my background checks show up not only clean (nothing on a criminal background check), but also in exemplary standings, like credit. I want to be the best potential candidate for a job in all aspects, which includes the ones on paper.

As an employer, I need to make sure I have more to go on than just a hunch, or gut feeling. I need something tangible and measurable to say that my potential new hires will do me justice for years to come.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547 

In the early days of my working life, I knew very little about loss prevention, security, or even basic background checks, much less that there were background check companies and background check experts that could handle the employee background checks for the employer. I was fresh out of high school and working in a small restaurant with a bakery.

There was a family consisting of a husband, his wife, and her brother that worked the early morning shift. After I was hired on, we ended up working several early mornings together.  We started to form a friendship of sorts.

They asked me to teach them some English, and I learned some Spanish from them. After several months, they did something I never expected.

They asked me to marry their brother.

It was then that I knew these were illegal immigrants. This marriage would allow the brother to stay in the country legally. They would even pay me cash to compensate me for my risk. They obviously had not had an employee background check.

I turned them down, but I never turned them in. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized the full extent of these actions. They were here illegally, and had to be using someone else’s social security number to be employed. It also meant that there probably hadn’t been any sort of pre employment screening including criminal background checks done by my employer that would have potentially caught their secret.

While I don’t think that these three would have ever stolen or embezzled from the company and risked their stay in this country, the bottom line is that they were here illegally. Consulting with a background check expert to handle the pre-employment screening conducted by my employer through a background check company that would have potentially caught their secret through the criminal background check process Background checks would have quickly discovered this oversight.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547

There was an interesting article in our local paper last week. One of our city commissioners had been sent a 1099 form from an employer in a different state. Her first thought was that it clearly was a mistake and a quick background check would clear the matter up.

How far from the truth that was.

She first contacted the company who sent her the 1099. As it turned out, this “employee” had been working there for about five years before they left. Since they had this social on file, there was not any other information they could identify.

In the process of her pre-employment screening, she had not consulted with a background check company or any background check experts to conduct criminal background checks and employee background checks.

The next step was to contact the credit bureaus. No suspicious or detrimental information had been recorded, but a flag was put on the accounts in case of any suspicious activity in the future. That was the good news.

The bad news was that in order to fix the taxes, she had to go through a rigorous process of proving who SHE was. She had to send every document she could showing her identity, as well as copies of her social security card and an affidavit stating who she was. The federal government was ok with the end result and she ahs successfully proven the 1099 and income is not hers.

As for the state revenue department, they still want their cut of this money. So they are not accepting this “proof” of stolen identity. As of this time a lawyer has been brought in to help clear up the matter.

No telling how many more hours and dollars will be spent to clear her name.

Consulting with a background check expert through a background check company to assist with criminal background checks and employee background checks can help ensure you are getting accurate information

This is another reason why background checks and pre employment screening are needed. There is often more damage than just making a bad hiring decision.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547 

 

You hire a new employee with the intention that they will be proficient in their job after an introductory training period. Once they are up and running, they should be able to complete the assigned tasks of their job description within an allotted time period that maximizes your productivity and subsequent payroll goals. If this hire is unproductive, or even worse begins to alienate customers, you will begin to decrease the leverage you might once have had by hiring this employee. You are now beginning to lose money by having them work for you. That’s why you want to conduct pre-employment screening or hire a background check company to assist you with this before you hire someone.

Pre-employment screening helps to reduce these incurred costs by reducing the likely hood of hiring a bad employee from the beginning. A background check company is a useful resource. Unfortunately, you can’t just terminate an employee without warning for poor job performance. If they commit an unforgivable act like theft or violence, then, legally, you can take a different course of action, but that is an exception.

You have to have a disciplinary action plan where they are given the opportunity to find out that they are not fulfilling the required expectations of the job, and are given an action plan and time frame to complete their turn around. This action plan may be repeated up to three or four times before the employee can be let go. In the mean time, you will continue to suffer losses from this employee.

Pre-employment screening will give you insight into an employee’s previous work history and work habits before you make the mistake of hiring them.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547

When you have background check experts conducting your pre-employment screening, it can be difficult to tell if they are actually doing a thorough job. If you have check after check come back with nothing on it, is it because there is nothing to find, or because the experts aren’t doing their job properly?

The best way to find out is to have the background check experts that you have hired, tell you what areas of screening they are conducting. You should be able to see each of the background checks that they run. Some examples would be employment and education verifications, perhaps a driver’s license inquiry for moving violations (or worse) and a look for outstanding warrants.

I had a professor once tell me that you will never hear about a good design, a bad one- yes, but never a good one. It makes sense. If something is working well, we simply use that item or process and keep going. It is the bad designs that take up our time as we try to fix or amend them. The same thing goes for pre-employment screening.

Good design or a good employee will not produce much comment. It is the bad design or the bad employee that you will hear about. That is when you will truly know what the background check experts have done. When you find the one bad seed in the mix, which is when the pre-employment screening will produce multiple red flags in their background check. You will then have the confidence that the background check experts really are doing a thorough job for you.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547 

I will grudgingly admit that I was duped. I had an acquaintance one time that was completely different than what I had first believed her to be. It was one of the few times that I wish I could have conducted pre-employment screening for someone in my personal life.

I had made a new friend who was introduced through mutual acquaintances. She had moved several times over the years that should have been my first clue to dig a little deeper. She bounced around from laborer job to laborer job.

This should have been a red flag because these are jobs that typically do not conduct employee background checks.

She was my friend so I didn’t question it much, and neither did anyone else.

What I did start to notice was that she started to drink more and more frequently. Over the next few months, she began drinking so much that she lost her job, her car, and most of her friends. As it turned out, she had always had a drinking problem. She also had several run-ins with the law which was a direct result of the drinking.

All of which she tried to hide by moving frequently and sticking to jobs that didn’t conduct employee background checks.

The last I saw her, she was moving again to a different state. I shudder to think of the mistake her next employer will make. If her closest friends didn’t know the truth, her boss surely won’t stand a chance.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547 

 

I used to look at job applications and marvel at the lack of education for these potential candidates. I used to think that maybe it was the area, or maybe it was because of the industry. As time went on, I started to notice how many more applicants seemed to not only have better educational backgrounds but also much higher degrees than what the job would require. That’s when I started pre-employment screening through a background check company.

The news reports at the height of our recession routinely would show master’s degree job hunters looking at jobs like waiting tables and retail stockers because they had been laid off and no one was hiring. For a while I used to think that the influx of highly educated applicants was a result of these lay offs. Until I started to use a background check company to run more thorough employee background checks and conduct pre-employment screening, I realized that I was not completely accurate in my assessment.

While there are more higher education applicants looking for jobs to get back on their feet, many others realized that these educational levels were now a standard. Many applicants, to stay competitive, have started to embellish or flat out lie about a degree they hold. It might be they started the degree but never finished, or are still going to school. Some are flat out lying about a school are degree program they never enrolled in. Employee background checks will sort out the fact from fiction and keep you from getting schooled in the process.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547 

I have found over the years, as a result of some bad hires, that I am not an expert in pre-employment screening. I am good at pre-screening employees and face-to-face interviews. But, after a few significantly bad new hire employees, I learned a very tough lesson about the importance of finding background check experts to conduct the background checks.

I am quite confident in my abilities and skill sets that have come from years of experience. I am also quite confident to know when I need to stop and ask for help. However, I am not an expert in everything. One of those things is pre-employment screening.

It is not only taking the time to read between the lines when you interview someone for a job. It comes down to two things: time and resources. Neither of which I really have as a manager and small business owner.

Background check experts have both the time and resources that most of us don’t have to really dig down below the surface and find out anything that might be hidden, undisclosed or taken place in another jurisdiction as part of the process of a background check.

They also have the time to evaluate the results that they uncover in their research. They can follow up on information that might not be readily accessible, or might require further investigation to complete the picture.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547 

It does not make a difference if you are conducting pre-employment screening for a new employee or background checks for a current one. The question remains the same – what are your resources compared to those of a background check company?

I would start by asking myself how much time I have to spend on this task?

The next question I would need to ask is what other commitments do I have for that same time frame. If you are like most of us, we rarely are tasked with a single item at a time. There are ongoing issues to be dealt with, reports to run or create, stores to operate and sell in… You get the idea.

So I will ask again.

What is the time frame that I am working under?

The answer is usually a very slim time frame.

I don’t have time to conduct pre-employment screening twice. As long as nothing completely egregious shows up, I will be satisfied. I am also probably only going to skim the surface of what a background check company could do.

Now let’s ask those same questions of a background check company.

How much time do they have to run those same background checks? Do they have the time and or other resources to run a more in depth check?

Can they conduct pre-employment screening a second time if there is an error, or if something didn’t show up properly?

I would safely answer yes to those questions.

To purchase Pre-Employment Screening Services or for more information on background check experts, background checks, criminal background checks, employee background checks or pre employment screening contact us at the background check company or call 1.770.426.0547