Knowing Your Employee By A Personal Background Check

In hiring potential employees for your company, do you feel that you have learned enough about an applicant just by looking at him or his resume?

Probably not.

So how do you get to know him on a more personal vein?

The answer is to conduct a personal background check on your applicants. The main purpose for doing this kind of investigation is to feel out an applicant's personality.

Taking down and verifying the personal and professional reference given by the applicants in their resume is a good start. However, when checking out about personal matters, authorities in the investigative field offer a fair warning to employers that they need not depend solely on this method.

As mentioned, it is a good start. Your investigations need not end there.

In most cases, applicants have a list of people who can give a positive character reference for them. However, the applicants trust the people in the list to give them a nice recommendation, once checked out.

Though the information from these reference persons may not be fabricated, they may not know any pertinent information about the applicant they are giving referral for.

Here are other methods you can use in obtaining a personal background check of an applicant.

• Credit report – employers can obtain a credit report of the prospective employee.

Most probably, an applicant has opened several different types of credit accounts. You can determine what account your applicant has open and his or her history of paying bills. You may get to know if they pay bills on time or a history of getting bankrupt.

Just by finding out this fact, indicate how responsible an applicant could be once he became an employee.

To delve deeper into the background check, you can draw a parallel of the credit history, job performance and retention of the employee on previous employment.

There are heated debates about these matters however since the Fair Credit Reporting Act, may have given indications that these reports should be confidential.
However, one cannot very well dispute that an employer can exercise certain rights to investigate the credit history of a person as pre-employment tool.

• Obtaining previous employment records –the jobs occupied, name of employer and address are among the data needed from these records.

Credit reports usually turn up with the same data, too. You can compare the information gleaned from these records to the information supplied by the applicant in his or her employment application.

Credit reports already have the personal information you need of an applicant. Furthermore, the applicant's real age and marital status data will also be unearthed.

However, the data can be utilized best in cross-referencing with other personal background check systems. By doing so, you get a complete view of the prospective employee's character. This can also be essential in determining the applicant's ability to perform the job he or she is applying for.

As an employer, you should be aware of the legislation regarding privacy and equal opportunity. Be conscious of the fact that you must not discriminate an employee due to the facts you have discovered about him or her.

Just always, keep in mind that the objective for doing personal background checks is to guarantee the security of your company. This certainly does not constitute violating the federal laws.

Remember to gather only the relevant data in checking out if an applicant is qualified for the job to be performed. You can also hire a professional investigator to do a more extensive personal background check, though make sure to limit them only to the very specific information you need.

It is important to be straightforward about your purpose for conducting a background check. There are consent forms for each type of investigation based on a federal law order. You must be forthcoming about these matters.

Ensure that your company hires the best ranking applicant, without you, having to answer for violations of federal directives regarding the manner of obtaining background checks.