Establishing An Employment Background Check Policy Guide

Quality employment screening is the best and least expensive risk mitigation tool a company can use to avoid the costs of a “Bad Hire”, which can be very high.

However, it is also important to develop an employment background check policy that is consistently applied and one that complies with the governing laws.

The following guidelines are designed to help you devise policies and procedures to accomplish this.

Please also note that all employment background check, drug screening, driving record and state release authorization forms are available in a PDF format file to our Automated Employment Screening Clients.

All of these FCRA compliant release documents may be e-mailed to the applicants and easily completed online.

1. Employment Screening Responsibilities

Establish the department or individuals who will conduct the employment screening and insure the information obtained in an employment background check is used in accordance with company policy and that the information is also kept securely and the privacy of applicants is respected.

2. When To Order A Background check

Establish at what point during the on-boarding process that an employment background check will be ordered. Some new “Ban-The-Box” laws require that this be done later on in the hiring process. This may not affect your company no, but these laws are a growing trend.

3. Hiring Matrix

To insure that your hiring criteria is consistently applied, develop a hiring or review matrix that establishes the weight given to any adverse information discovered in a background check.

4. Obviously, the first consideration would be the nature of the offense or crime committed.

Keep in mind that sometimes charges are not nearly as serious as they sound. See this page in our website for further explanation.

5. Consider how long ago the offense occurred.

A credible study by Carnegie-Mellon university concludes that for many people with criminal records of many types, that have had no contact with law enforcement for 8 years or more, are highly unlikely to re-offend.

 See this page in our website for more information on this subject.

Keeping in mind that some types of offenders have a very high rate of re-offending throughout their lives.

6. Consider the needs of your company or organization to fill the position.

Background checks are not a tool to stop people from getting jobs. Rather they are designed to be one of a number of hiring considerations.

7. How Thorough Should A Background Check Be?  

Most companies believe it prudent to run a thorough background check on all applicants no matter what the position applied for.

A comprehensive employment background check would likely include not only a check of Federal state and county criminal records but also past employment verification, education, licensing and other credential verifications as well as employment driving history.

8. Compliance

What Employers Need to Know About Background checks.

The Federal government has published a very important and helpful guide for employers with this title. It is also short and easy to read. Please see this page in our website for this publication. 

Disclaimer
None of the information contained in this web site should be construed as legal advice. All forms, policies, information and procedures should be reviewed by your legal counsel before being used in any way.