Employee Screening for Effective Hiring

Updated: April 14, 2011

Any company who wants to hire new employees should have a mandatory background check. This will give the employer all the necessary information about the applicants which can help them see if they are fit for the job or not. This is usually what companies do because there might be certain cases which might just happen when employees are hired. This can only lead to conflicts in the offices which will not be good for business.

So if you want your company to be successful, you need to ensure that you are hiring trusted employees. Here are some things which you might want to remember in doing so.

Running an employee background check may seem such an easy thing to do. All you have to do it get their names, type them and the results will be up in a few seconds. You will be able to know all the information about your applicants. What most employers do not know is that there are certain guidelines which should be followed in order to have a fair background check on the employees.

The first thing that you have to do is to check with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). They are the ones who give a set of guidelines and tell the proper way of doing a background check on their applicants. These provide the employers with the proper way of using the information that they have gotten from the background search.

Legal risks are involved in background checks. You need to be careful in choosing the way in which you are searching for background information. When you use search engines, you may be charged with legal implications. Make sure that you are searching for the right person and you are getting the right information about them. Usually, discrimination and prejudice are issues which regard these searches.

You need to make sure that you have a written agreement with the applicant allowing you to do a background check on them. Doing random checks will be grounds for complaints and invasion of privacy. There are certain limits to what an employer can do on these things.

When you have already gotten the information about the applicant, these can be considered. You should not use these to decide whether he will be hired or not. Usually there are public arrest records, even fraud and other cases that might stop you from hiring them, but according to the FCRA, the information gathered can only be used to check on the person but cannot be used as basis.

All the information that you will get is private, hence, you have no right to release any of these. The information which you have found about the employee should be between you and the employee. You cannot tell anyone in the office about anything that you have found especially those who are not even involved in the hiring process. It is your privilege to know these things and you should be responsible for keeping them private.