Navigating Aliases/AKAs in National Criminal Records Searches - Part 1
As mysterious as the word “alias” can sound, you don’t have to be a secret agent to have one. In fact, nearly everyone you meet has gone by a different name at one point in time. In social settings, the confusion can lead to awkward situations at worst, but when a person applies for a job with your company or organization and they have multiple AKAs (also known as), or aliases, conducting thorough and accurate employee background checks can get complicated, as you can imagine, especially when searching criminal record databases. Before hiring an employment screening company, here are the key points to remember about aliases and AKAs to make sure you’re getting the most accurate results possible.
Word to the Wise
Make no mistake: if one of your candidates has something to hide, they’re not going to offer up the information you’d need to track it down, especially if there’s a way to muddy the water. The criminally minded will know the subtle ways to confuse the background check process, or cover their tracks, whether that means omitting past aliases and addresses on the application or making minor misspellings to their name on the background check authorization paperwork.
Cynicism aside, however, omissions and misspellings can also be the result of innocent oversight. But with the following pointers and best practices, you can avoid confusion and conduct criminal background checks with confidence.
How Do Criminal Record Searches Work?
The reason why it’s so important for screeners to know an applicant’s previous aliases and AKAs is because name searches are the universal Step One in criminal record research. Generally, a different name may as well be a different person in this sense, especially when/if one name pulls up a criminal case file and another (for the same person) doesn’t.
Step One: Searching court indexes by name. At this stage, if no record match is found for a given name in a jurisdiction, the name is cleared for that jurisdiction and the search continues across other jurisdictions, such as the applicant’s other places of residence and/or employment.
Step Two: Confirming findings. If a match is found for a given name, the verifier will then confirm the match and criminal record findings by honing the search with additional identifiers, such as the applicant’s social security number (SSN), date of birth, or driver’s license number.
When working with quality screeners, a court index search is conducted for each name provided by the applicant. Verify with your screener before contracting with them that searching multiple AKAs is part of their process.