Are Background Checks Foolproof?

Short answer is no, background checks are not foolproof, and there are various reasons why they are not.

Identity theft can happen almost anywhere.

There was a manufacturing company that I know of that conducted criminal history checks and social security traces on all its employees after hiring them permanently from a temp to hire agency.  One particular employee who had been on the job several weeks was hired permanently and a background check was conducted.  The social security trace indicated that the employee had a previous residence in a western state, leading to uncovering several serious charges and convictions.  In his current state of residence, the check uncovered an open warrant from the previous state.

After some negotiations with the employer, the state investigative agency came to the workplace and took the employee into custody for extradition to his previous state of residence.  Once the individual was fingerprinted, it was determined that he was not the one that the warrant had been issued for.  It turns out that he was an illegal immigrant and had purchased the identification, a driver’s license and a social security card from a “broker”, who provided such things.

The plant manager told me that he had shown up several weeks later with new ID, but was not hired in spite of being an excellent worker.

The company since has required all its staffing companies to run criminal checks on all contract workers sent to their location.

A company can help ensure that it is getting accurate results in its background checks by providing its background company with accurate identifying information, checking identification carefully, and asking questions of the applicant if any red flags appear.

Remember the best policy is to conduct a criminal check in every jurisdiction where the applicant has lived, worked, or attended school.  Many metropolitan areas include several counties which should also be checked.

Even then, it is possible to miss some information, such as a shoplifting charge that occurred while on vacation.

But just because something might be missed is no reason not to conduct the background check.  Most criminal history will be uncovered through comprehensive background checks.

Want to know more about background checks?  Call 770-426-0547 or click here for information.

Could Background Check Have Prevented Rape?

The question above was asked by CNN, who investigated and incident on the Gulf Coast last month when an oil spill worker was put to work with a background check being done on him.

The oil company that employed the worker along with hundreds of others conducted drug checks on their workers, but not background checks.  The 41-year-old employee, who had a criminal record dating back to 1991,and has been a registered sex offender since 1996, offered to give a ride home to a co-worker who wasn’t feeling well.  Once at her hotel, he asked to use the bathroom and when he came out, he attacked and raped her.

He was charged with sexual battery and failure to register as a sex offender.  He was held under $505,000 bond in Jackson County Mississippi.

It’s easy now to play Monday morning quarterback and question the actions of the oil company.  They decided that drug testing was important enough to run to avoid hiring users, but not a background check in order to determine if the potential worker had a past that included violent criminal acts and sexual offenses. The oil company, already dealing with a public relations nightmare and an environmental disaster, now had yet another embarrassing incident to defend.

Background checks are now an accepted part of the hiring process and are quick, and economical to do, making it so easy to avoid problems like those described above.  Everyone deserves the safest environment possible in the workplace, and the victim’s exposure to this predator could have been easily prevented.

As the victim was quoted as saying, “If they would have ran the background checks, they wouldn’t have had a man like that working.”

To discuss your background check program, click here, or call 770-426-0547.

Are background checks part of your company’s pre-hire procedures?  If not, they should be because the cost of hiring the wrong person can be high in more ways than one.

You invest a lot of time and money into hiring the right person for your company: running ads, recruiting, reading and sorting through resumes, narrowing down the candidates, arranging phone interviews, live interviews, second interviews, calling employers and references, completing new hire paperwork, checking identification, completing tax forms and more forms.  Then time spent training and educating the individual to your company’s way of doing business while he is being paid a salary.  All this time involves other productive employees and occurs before there is any production at all from the employee.  The Department of Labor estimates that it will cost one third of an employee’s salary to replace him and that figure goes higher with the relative position of the employee.

Plus, there are non-quantifiable losses when the background checks fail to eliminate an undesirable candidate.  Loss of morale within the company being shorthanded again, or even loss of customers, cash, or other assets are examples.

And when the problem employee is finally gone, the process begins again.

The current economy has produced a large supply of applicants for every open position, and all the applicants want to appear as appealing as possible.  Use  comprehensive background checks, personalized for your company’s unique requirements, to fine the applicants most suited for your team.

Call 1-770-426-0547 or click here to discuss how you can lower your hiring costs through the use of background checks.