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Risky Business Not Using Background Checks when Hiring
Businesses that do not use background checks are putting themselves at risk for hiring strangers as new employees, according to a safe hiring expert interviewed in the Business News Daily article ‘Choosing a Background Check Service: A Buying Guide for Businesses.’ The article is at http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7636-choosing-a-background-check-service.html.
Attorney Lester Rosen – founder and CEO of Employment Screening Resources® (ESR) and author of ‘The Safe Hiring Manual’ – said that employers who do not perform proper background checks on new employees when hiring “are basically welcoming a stranger into their business.” Rose added: “That stranger has access to your customers, your cash, your IT — everything.”
Rosen told Business News Daily: “It would make as much sense to do that as it would to walk down the street and give the keys to [your] front door to a total stranger just because when you talk to that stranger, they look good or sound good.” Although conducting background checks costs money, Rosen said that cost “is a lot cheaper than hiring an employee who steals or hurts somebody.”
However, Rosen also told Business News Daily the fact that employers conduct background checks on applicants does not mean they assume everyone who applies for a job at their business is a bad person. “The idea is that, as they used to say in politics, ‘You want to trust, but verify,’” Rosen said. “You want to hire based on information, as well as instinct.”
Quite the contrary, Rosen said that the majority of applicants turn out to be good. “Most of the time, most of the people pass the background check,” Rosen told Business News Daily. “But if you get someone who has a problem, the employer will be very happy they dodged the bullet and didn’t bring someone into the workplace who is dangerous, unfit, dishonest or unqualified.”
So what do background checks consist of? Along with criminal history, education and past work verification, and possibly credit checks, Rosen said employers performing background checks may want to examine an applicant’s sex offender status, motor vehicle records if they will be driving for work, and Social Security Number traces to show past addresses and if any aliases were used.
Businesses also need to be just as careful in selecting the company performing the background checks. Rosen told Business News Daily the key is to find a firm that follows the law when conducting background checks in case something goes wrong during the hiring process. “You have to make sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s, because it is heavily legally regulated,” Rosen said.
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