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Background Check Practices Matter
July 02, 2013 posted by Steve Brownstein
by Susan M. Heathfield
There are advantages and disadvantages to using external experts to background check the credentials and history of your potential employees. One disadvantage was pointed out to me by a colleague. If anything that might contribute to a decision not to hire a person is found in an outsourced background check, it must be revealed to the candidate.
When you do the background check internally, you may make the decision to hire - or not - based on a variety of factors that would normally affect your selection decision. You do not have to reveal anything that you found in your background check.
But, there are reasons why you may want to talk to the candidate about any worrisome findings. When I worked as an HR Director, we did criminal background checks on prospective employees. (My company's product was small, easy to steal, and lucrative to sell. The company had experienced a great deal of theft prior to instituting the practice.) I encountered two cases that I'll share. Both had answered the criminal record question on my job application with a negative.
The first was a young man who had served in the Navy and was looking for his second job after leaving the service. When checked, his record showed an offense. I brought it to his attention because he had formally stated that he had none.
It turns out that when he was in the Navy, he and a group of guys had been drinking beer at a beach-side tavern and were sitting in the sand and on the stairs to the patio which was full. They were ticketed for open intoxicants on the beach for drinking outside of the establishment. I hired this young man, who hadn't even realized that this infraction would show up on a criminal history - in fact, he was shocked. He was a great employee until he returned full-time to earn his Bachelor's degree.
In a second instance, an older woman had been convicted of welfare fraud over a decade earlier. She believed, and had been told, that this would disappear from her record after ten years. So, her belief that the conviction was no longer on her record drove her response. I hired her, too, since there had been no additional convictions in the intervening years, and she, too, was a terrific employee.
Never create a policy that states that your organization will not hire people with convictions on their record. You can lose some potentially great employees. You can also be accused of discrimination since minority candidates may disproportionately have criminal records in their background. Consider each situation you encounter individually.
