5 Reasons To Run A Pre-Employment Background Check On Potential Employees
As many business owners will tell you, a pre-employment background check may be the single most important step of the hiring process.
Unfortunately, many businesses don’t bother to run background checks. It’s easy to see why: sifting through all those resumes is a time-consuming exercise. If you find someone who seems like a perfect hire, it can be tempting to just roll with it.
Well, first impressions are often deceiving. Sure, your applicant may come across as smart, friendly, and hard-working. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make sure your business is protected.
Besides, conducting a background check is fairly easy nowadays. Websites like GoLookUp provide this kind of service free of charge.
Think you can get away without running a potential employee background check? Here are 5 reasons that may change your mind.
1. Criminal History
For most businesses, this is the main reason to conduct a background check. By doing so, you’ll gain insight into potential criminal conviction in your applicant’s past.
Sometimes, these criminal charges will label your potential employee as dangerous or unreliable. Other times, the charges will be irrelevant to your business. Either way, this information helps you make an educated hiring decision.
2. Education and Certifications
Verifying your applicant’s professional certifications is another good reason to run pre-employment checks. This helps you confirm two things.
First, you can make sure your potential employee is honest with you. Also, the job in question may actually require the applicant to have certain qualifications. In this case, you’d be legally obliged to run a background check.
3. Avoiding Liability
Let’s say you hire a truck driver without running a background check, and he or she causes an accident on the highway. After getting arrested, it turns out that your worker had already faced two DUI charges in the past.
In this case, you could easily be held liable for the entire accident. That’s the price of not doing your due diligence.
4. Past Infractions
New hire background checks are useful for more than highlighting criminal history. They can also help you gain insight into credit histories, driving records, and other vital information.
Most of the time, a bad credit history won’t have any bearing on an employee’s ability to do the job at hand. However, what if the job involves the handling of money? You’d probably be glad for the ability to conduct a background check.
5. Getting the Full Picture
This shouldn’t be a surprise, but most applicants put on a performance for their job interview. They know that their best chance of getting the job is to come across as a friendly and professional person.
Some applicants sneak some of this performance into their resumes. A background check lets you confirm that they haven’t excluded certain jobs or some other information.
More on Running a Pre-Employment Background Check
Don’t feel like going through the interview process again in a couple of months? If so, do your best to make sure that your new hire will work out. Conducting a pre-employment background check should provide you some peace of mind.
Interested in more information on how best to run your business? Take a look at our blog!
