To achieve success, your organization needs to prioritize investing in exceptional employees. The individuals you bring into the company are responsible for generating revenue and fulfilling your daily operations. As the building blocks of your organization, it’s essential that management hires knowledgeable and reliable individuals.
A primary goal of any organization is to ensure it runs smoothly. One way to accomplish this is to complete a thorough background check on the candidates you are considering. This includes full transparency when it comes to an applicant’s past positions, affiliations, and more.
What is an Employee Background Check?
An employee background check is considered a standard procedure for actively recruiting organizations. It reviews an applicant’s personal information, educational background, criminal records, and career performance. Most hiring managers utilize this resource to confirm the candidate is considered a good fit for the position.
Companies should do this during the recruitment process to avoid hiring individuals incompatible with your company’s mission, outlook, and financial prospects. In industries with highly sensitive data, such as IT, banking, and healthcare, conducting background checks is crucial.
In terms of its benefits, background checks provide safety and integrity to the company. Additionally, because these are done to find suitable hires, it also improves the company’s hiring process and limits the number of incompatible hires entering the company.
How to Do a Background Check the Right Way
Hiring employers should consider key steps and procedures to properly conduct a background check. Streamlining your recruitment processes will make hiring more efficient and allow you to easily scale up your organization.
1. Ask for consent
During the initial interview, employers should let the applicant know they will perform a background check on their application. This promotes company transparency. Additionally, asking for permission is required, as doing a check without the candidate’s written consent is illegal.
2. Notice basic information
To conduct a thorough background check on a potential employee, you will first need the information to complete the form. These may include the applicant’s name, social security number, birthday, and transcripts.
3. Verify your applicant’s identity
Verifying the candidate’s identity is the first step in the background process. One method is to use employee verification software or Know Your Employee (KYE) solutions, which uses several verification measures to effectively prove a person’s identity. Identity proofing will prove the person you are interviewing is the person on the ID they are presenting.
4. Contact references listed in the candidate’s application
Resumes generally have a list of individuals employers can contact. These individuals are usually past supervisors, managers, or colleagues of the applicant and are well-equipped to discuss their credibility and work ethic.
It is important to contact references to get information and understand the qualities, performance, and professional capabilities the applicant possesses.
5. Check the validity of their credentials
If the candidate has any licenses on their resume, you should also double-check if they’re still valid. Credentials can either be academic or professional. While academic credentials, such as degrees and honors, are important, you should confirm professional credentials, like certificates, apprenticeships, and even work experience.
6. Find criminal records on your candidate’s application
Your company wants to hire individuals that will make the greatest impact, have the required knowledge, and are reliable. Hiring a prospect with a criminal past can potentially jeopardize your company and make your organization more susceptible to fraud. You may want to consider whether the criminal past includes convictions or the crime was relevant to your specific organization. You can also request government documents from the applicant, which clearly state they aren’t involved in any active criminal activity or cases.
7. Use a background check site to review records
To make things slightly easier, employers can utilize background check websites to review the relevant records needed, such as criminal records.
Some website examples include Truthfinder, Intelius, and Instant Checkmate. These platforms are useful for companies that receive multiple applications in a short amount of time and do not have time to run deep background checks.
8. Review the results
After reviewing the information on the applicant, your hiring team can now make an informed decision on how to proceed. If the results received are satisfactory, you can let the applicant know they’re moving on to the next step.
If you are uncomfortable with the results, you can inform the candidate you are moving on to someone else.
Background Checking for Success
Properly screening candidates before hiring them will make a huge difference in your company. To reduce the risk of fraud and optimize performance, make sure that the people you hire are reliable and trustworthy.
Provide the best possible future for your company by investing in your employees today. Strengthen your hiring processes and conduct better background checks with the help of Q5id’s Know Your Employee (KYE) software.
Contact us today to learn more!
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