A background check is a crucial pre-employment screening step before hiring an applicant. Many business owners or managers often assume that the applicants are telling the truth on their resumes. But as an article for job seekers in Job Hunt magazine reveals, according to a 2019 study, 10% of the surveyed workforce have lied or embellished the truth on their resume, in a cover letter, or on their LinkedIn profile. Another report from 2019 revealed that fully 85% of employers caught candidates lying on their applications or resumes.
An organization is only as sound as its people! You owe it to your existing team, and to your collective future success, to prioritize background checks in your hiring to protect your organization and the people in it.
What is a background check?
A background check is a comprehensive review of a person’s commercial, financial, and criminal records. It includes education history, employment history, credit history, identity and address verification, and driver’s license record.
Does your company need background check services?
According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 80 million people in the U.S. have a criminal record. Knowing the facts about your applicants’ backgrounds may impact your hiring decisions, the safety of your work environment, and your productivity and effectiveness as a company.
A background check will help you:
- Reduce hiring risks. Understanding an applicant’s criminal history, if one exists, will provide you with the information with which to decide if the candidate is a good fit for your organization. An applicant may have only minor charges or very old ones.
- Ensure workplace safety. The formal background check can help you identify applicants who may pose a safety or security risk to the workplace. Imagine not knowing that a person you plan to interview has a history of embezzlement, sex offense or other violence! You cannot take the risk of endangering your employees, your money, your property or your reputation by hiring without a comprehensive, outside look at your applicants’ histories.
- Assess job competence. It’s absolutely essential that you verify the claims job applicants make about their experience, from educational qualifications to job history. The employer must know the potential employee is telling the truth beyond the shadow of a doubt.
The bottom line:
A comprehensive background check is a STRONG insurance policy for future liability issues from other employees and customers with whom your company has contact.
~ Tim Dimoff, President and CEO, SACS Consulting
SACS Consulting commonly engages new clients who had previously been sued because they had failed to conduct the basic background checks that would have revealed the ‘questionable’ negative history of a person they hired, who then caused problems. The background check would have prevented this experience.
Why hire a professional company to perform your background checks?
There are three key reasons using a professional company to run your background check is optimal. Companies who utilize background checks in their hiring processes do so to:
- protect themselves from future litigation charges related to negligence
- safeguard their assets
- assure that current employees feel safe and secure in the workplace.
There are numerous policies and regulations to follow when conducting background checks, and the rules are constantly changing. To get the most accurate, compliant, confidential pre-employment background checks on your applicants, it’s best to hire an outside firm like SACS Consulting, who are experts in this complex area of employment.
SACS also offers many different types of background checks as investigative tools to help you with your business hiring practices. The options differ by the depth of data, analysis, and the specific investigative goal. To learn more about our Background Check options, visit our Employment Background Check Services page.
Ready to reduce your hiring risks? SACS can help.
Learn more about our Employment Background Check services here. Then give us a call at 330-255-1101 to discuss options for your company.