Background Checks: Are they worth it?

As a recruiter, I spend a huge amount of time speaking to, interviewing and meeting with candidates in relation to new roles. In my job, I act as a conduit between employer and candidate – assessing not only their skills, experience and qualifications, but also their cultural fit – making an assessment, through my experience of the client, as to whether they are the right candidate to be shortlisted and introduced to the client. 

As part of our service to clients, we can also undertake background checks but many employers still like to keep this process in house – either way, it’s a good idea to do some referencing and background checking when a new hire joins your business. I have produced this short article around background checking and hope it proves useful when considering background checking for new staff.

Pros and Cons of Background Checks - the advantages of comprehensive employment screening services:

·        protects the reputation of your business – don’t hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons

·        reduce the costs associated with hiring the wrong person – hiring right first time saves time and money

·        industry best practice and demonstrates due diligence – your candidate is reassured that if you’re checking them out, you’ve checked out every colleague as well, so they are ready to head into a team which is thoroughly vetted. As a future employee, wouldn’t you feel more assured in knowing that your co-workers have been screened to help ensure they are qualified for the jobs they hold?

·        compliance with legislation and industry requirements, which differ from sector to sector and role to role.

·        avoid conflicts of interest and safeguard your workplace, ensuring you get committed & professional candidates on board.

·        allows you to make informed recruitment decisions based on fact, especially if you have several excellent candidates to review.

Why do employers do background checks?

Both recruitment agencies and employers themselves generally don’t assume that people applying for jobs are lying on their CV’s and job applications – quite the contrary. Good faith is essential to the recruitment process all round – you want your candidate to feel wanted & valued. Generally, the background check is often an ultimate step taken by employers to help ensure a sound hiring decision and protect the employer from a number of potential risks at offer acceptance stage.

Job Competence:

A background check is a reliable way of verifying claims made by job seekers during the hiring process. Within any employment market, the appeal of overstating your educational qualifications or enhancing job histories, for example, can grow. Having a stop/check situation where we are asking for verification or proof is an excellent way to not only verify genuine successes, but also to put off those candidates who may be ‘trying their luck’ to see if they can get through the process. This saves time & money by limiting the formal applications to the best candidates with verifiable histories.

Workplace Theft:

Dishonesty and theft is very rare but unfortunately does occasionally happen. Employers know that most business theft today is performed by insiders. A background check can help employers to make intelligent and informed hiring decisions to help reduce their risk of theft and can also demonstrate to all relevant stakeholders that as a company, you did the best you could to prevent any losses.

Honesty and Integrity:

A confirmed misstatement or fabrication made by a candidate during the hiring process often is enough for an employer to question the candidate’s honesty or integrity and potentially disqualify them from a job. To see the importance to employers of confirming candidate credentials, look no further than the very public examples of senior executives that embellished their credentials, only to cause harm to the reputation of the employers when discovered that failed to conduct a sufficient background check on them.

Summary:

Background checks help employers safeguard their reputations by creating safer, more secure work environments staffed by qualified employees.

What does a background check consist of?

The hiring of new employees can be sort of like walking a tightrope. It is important to find the right candidate with the qualifications and integrity to do the job, but it’s also risky to accept candidates at face value. To be really effective in hiring practices involves delving into the background of applicants to get a better idea of their abilities and employment performance. However, this must be measured with respect for the privacy of each individual candidate as well as staying compliant with relevant laws. The purpose of the background check is to help evaluate aptitude and skills and needs to be carried out with this as the primary goal.

A background check will investigate a candidate’s background based on criteria determined by their prospective or current employer. A check of a candidate’s background may include employment, education, criminal records, credit history, driving licence and reference checking.

Verify Employment Qualifications:

You could have a lot of candidates for the same role, or be struggling to attract a half decent short-list. You could be in the (quite lovely) position of having several applicants with outstanding qualifications to do a job. It can be difficult to determine one that sticks out. At the basic level, the background check is to determine if information provided by an applicant is true and accurate. It also helps paint a picture about the applicant beyond what is on paper or discovered at interview. Previous employers give an idea of what kind of work habits an applicant has. References can provide information on personal characteristics.

Protecting the Business:

The background check can be considered as a preemptive measure to ensure the integrity of the business and the safety of employees. Individuals may not be appropriate for certain positions due to some aspect of their history. Certain kinds of information can only be found with a formal background check.

Legal Issues with Background Checks:

One of the most important aspects of the background check is that information is gathered for job related purposes. Some activities of a background check may not be necessary. It is easy for a company to go overkill in a background check to err on the side of caution. Before a background check is initiated, evaluate what the purpose is for it. Certain information, such medical and credit history, require written consent from the applicant & you must follow strict rules about storing & transmitting confidential personal data.

Background checks may be somewhat different for applicants and should be planned on a case by case basis, however they must be consistent for all candidates. The background investigation can be an essential part of the hiring process. It is a tool that helps identify qualifications of applicants. The hiring authority needs to take care in collecting information to get what they require without violating the privacy of applicants.

If you were planning on going on a date with a prospective new partner, it would be considered unseemly were you to run background checks on your potential new other half before asking them out. But the same does not hold true when hiring a new employee. While taking a chance on a blind date might result in a bad evening or an awkward few hours in the pub, there’s absolutely no doubt that making a wrong hiring decision can haunt your company, your other employees and your client base.

Making the right decision:

The cost and time expended in finding a replacement for that poor hiring decision can be huge and in a worst-case scenario, damaging to the company.

The practice is so important that nearly seven out of 10 companies (69 percent) claim they conduct criminal background checks on all job candidates, according to a background check survey from the Society for Human Resources Management. That survey shows another 18 percent conduct such checks on select job finalists and only 14 percent say they don’t research candidates for criminal records.

Chris Dyer, founder of PeopleG2, a leading provider of human capital due diligence services in the US, understands the complex challenges inherent to talent management decisions. What he offers here are his do’s and don’ts when it comes to protecting your business against bad hires:

Be broad and thorough: Look at an expansive spectrum of information, which includes consideration of an applicant’s education, employment, and criminal history, driving history, social media and so much more. Companies lose great candidates when they look at only one specific item.

Don’t use the “box.”: Many countries are making efforts to ban the "box," which is that question on applications that reads, "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" Instead of immediate discrimination, interview and consider all applicants equally. Then you can run a broad and thorough background check.

Do follow the law: Based on the way the background check is conducted, you will be required to have a legal release form completed by the applicant, inform that person of his/her rights, and provide that applicant with a copy of the report, as well as adverse actions communications.

Don’t bend the laws: There are so many opportunities to conduct a background check the wrong way, which means as an employer, you must take great care to follow the rules. The rules concerning background checks vary based on location – check first if unsure of how to proceed.

Be consistent: Ensure that the process for all applicants is consistent. Two applicants applying for the same job should have the same searches and investigations run on them.

Always communicate: If and when you find something on a background check that may impact the decision to hire an applicant, you should — at a minimum — engage in a conversation with the applicant. So many misconceptions, mistakes, and reporting errors can be resolved by conducting that face-to-face communication.

Do locate patterns: Positive and negative patterns are the best way to evaluate your applicant. A single good act or bad act should not be the defining measure of a person or of their job ability. Considering consistent patterns of behaviour is a defensible way for employers to make hiring decisions.

Don’t seek out only the negative: Background checks are inherently viewed as a way to pinpoint negative information. Use a background check to also locate positives that will help you choose between two well-qualified candidates.

Do use a professional agency to process your background check: We outsource the majority of our background checking here at The Payments Recruitment Group, depending on the client’s requirements, to ensure consistency and a thorough process. Great screening companies will do a far better job of locating the information you want. They have the experience and processes to be accurate and efficient. They also prevent you from viewing data that might be a violation of local laws.

Don’t run a limited search yourself: You can’t find everything online. So much of the concrete — legally obtained — data for a background check can only be conducted by a licensed background check firm.

Conclusion:

We hope you have found this brief guide to background checking informative and useful. If you need any advice or assistance with background checking throughout your recruitment process, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. As part of our commitment to providing great service, we are happy to incorporate background checking into any of our client’s terms. Happy Hiring!

Billy Nixon

Payments Recruitment Limited

[email protected]

www.payments-recruitment.co.uk

www.payments-search.co.uk