How to get a criminal background check?
A background check is a process a person or company uses to verify that an individual is who they claim to be, and this provides an opportunity to check and confirm the validity of someone's criminal record, education, employment history, and other activities from their past. For secured hiring of the potential candidates, employers seek the applicants’ information through referral check or background investigations. An employee background check helps to determine if the applicant is qualified with no criminal record, violations or misrepresent personal or work history, etc.
The criminal background check for employment is the most critical and essential aspect, especially for renowned organizations. Many agencies and institutions offer this service on your behalf and provide complete validation data against your desired applicant. In this way, you can protect employees, customers and so the company’s reputation. It also supports to enhance recruitment quality, mandate law and regulation, and prevent any workplace harassment or other criminal activity.
Are you pondering how to get background checks for employees? Generally, a referral check of an applicant is acquired through contacting former employer’s HR personnel or supervisor, co-workers, and affiliated educators. In this way, reliable information is generated involving verified previous employment and an individual’s abilities, character and skills. While conducting criminal background check, HR professionals deal with several legal challenges such as:
- Federal Law - Many federal laws (direct or indirect) control the practice of background checks. FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) helps third party to inquire credit check and character for an employee but require legally issued report with well-written disclosure and employee’s notification. Similarly, FACT Act (Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act) ensures the secured consumption of employee’s credit information.
- State Law - It helps to regulate criminal background checks by safeguarding personal information and records, illegal immigration and criminal histories before an employer can offer employment. Employer’s HR or third party need to check with relevant state laws for criminal background validity.
Moreover, it is not a practical activity for employers to perform criminal background check online or in-house through HR representatives. Therefore, the emergence of third-party agencies providing secured services of criminal background check is observed. Their business is to conduct screening of potential candidates through relied practices following legal guidelines and regulations.
Head of Human Resource and Administration at The Citizens Archive of Pakistan
4 年Good article! but most of these agencies charge 8k-15k per criminal background check, and ultimately it adds up the recruitment cost. Since most of the local police station data has been computerized, we can ask the new inductee to produce a certificate from an authorized police station, stating "no criminal record has been found of xyz". It takes only 7-10 days and it's totally free of cost.