Misconceptions About Pre-employment Screening

Despite their importance, pre-employment screening is often subject to misconceptions and myths. Some of these misconceptions are harbored by employees and job applicants are mostly based on a basic misunderstanding about the process, laws and the very nature around pre-employment screening. To fully appreciate the importance and value of pre-employment screening, debunking the main misconceptions around them is the only way.

Criminal Records Are Signs of Unemployment

Both employers and job applicants tend to have misconception, most employers think that by virtue of having criminal records, a job applicant is not accepted. Most job applicants also think that criminal records mean they won’t get hired and they won’t have a job.

The reality is that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission places certain restrictions on employers who use criminal records as an excuse to deny them employment. One requirement of the commission is that the nature of the conviction must have an impact on the nature of the job available. Also, a lot of employers realized that pre-employment screening and background checks sometimes return false reports. Which means rushing to make hiring decisions can lead them to lawsuits.

Applicants Have No Power

A lot of job applicants believe that they don’t have any powers when it comes to pre-employment screening. Thinking employers have all the cards, which is what some employers also think.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives job applicants all the power. For instance, any pre-employment screening cannot be conducted without the written consent of the applicant.

All Pre-Employment Screening Are the Same

This is the most common misconception among employers, which is what being perpetuated by cheap pre-employment screening firms. The goal is to convince employers that their services are as good as the expensive ones.

Child-Related Background Check Services

Every day, children across countries come into contact with a lot of businesses and organizations like malls, schools, childcare centers and hospitals. The implementation and development of policies and legislation that provides for the background check services of people who will work or volunteer in child related work and organizations which is an important tactic for creating and maintaining organizations for the safety of the children.

Most stares have introduced legislation on providing for child related background check services or who are working towards such legislation. This legislation will show the broad categories of child-related employment where employers, employees, and volunteers need to fulfill background check services requirements. There are important differences all over jurisdictions about the type of background check services that are in place, what records are being checks and who needs to undergo such procedures.

Child Safety Policy Development and Professional Registration

Adding to the child-related legislation in employment, all states have legislation that needs people who want to register in certain jobs to undergo background check services for criminal records and offences. This means that even in jurisdictions when employment legislation related with children does not exist and there are still requirements for people who are working in certain jobs to undergo background check services, due to the fact that it is part of the application requirements, certain people are exempt from the requirements of those who are working with children.

Background Check Services: Saving a Company from Adverse Consequences

Background check services consist of a process of investigating the credentials of potential employees to make sure that companies are hiring the right people for the available jobs, including a range of verification for potential job employees.

Potential Risks Companies Face

Depending on the current employee’s job in the company and on the nature of the company, the company will face a range of risks that will probably be avoided by conducting background check services.

• Financial Loss
• Operational Risk
• Damage of Status

A Comprehensive Solution

Companies may differ in size and location, which may need different types of background check services. A range of solutions developed that is entirely customized to meet the companies needs form pre-employment screening, background checks to interviews. With the understanding and years of experience about what kind of factors will impose a risk for a company, targeted checks performed will not only lower the risk for companies but also for their stakeholders.

Advantages of Background Check Services

• Integrity

Background check services make the company’s ethics strong; it is part of the insider threat management to enforce the ethics and integrity policies and guidelines.

• Ethical Climate Enhancement

Background check services will help enhance a positive ethical culture within the company where their employees share the company’s values. A positive ethical climate will add to the employee’s motivation that is self-enforcing and results into a responsible culture in the company.

• Trust

Employers will prevent potential issue through background check services. This leads to increasing the trust among all the employees and from regulatory people as well as with the shareholders and stakeholders.

Benefits of Background Check Services

Employers face a lot of challenges in the human resources sector. Hiring the perfect employee for the right job uses one of the most crucial and difficult challenges which became more difficult with a very mobile workforce and a global economy. Employers won’t be able to rely on just the interviews in making the right hiring decision, which is where background check services come in. Background check services include processes like pre-employment screening that allows employers to check and verify information about an applicant like their education, their job history and their performance. Pre-employment screening also reveals the most important information about the applicant’s behavior and if they had any substance abuse, bankruptcies, criminal convictions, civil litigation, their credit history and driving records.

Better Applicants Will Lead to Better Employees

Employers who use background check services as a part of their hiring process realize a lot of important benefits; there is a general improvement in the quality of potential employees, which leads to better workers and a workplace with high productivity and low turnover. For instance, pre-employment screening discourages bad applicants from applying, however, others will be more likely to honestly represent themselves.

51 percent of all résumés have inaccuracies and discrepancies in employment, performance and educational achievements. But it is also important to take in mind that announcement will encourage applicants that are high risk with criminal backgrounds to drop themselves, which will save money and time in the hiring process. However, the announcement does not discourage applicants who are qualified and knows that pre-employment screening will not show any significant problems.

Background Checks 101

Employment background checks revolve around information of people who can result in negative reports that have unfavorable outcomes for a lot of applicants. These reasons make legislation that will protect the right of job applicants and employees and make sure that the information revolving in employment background checks are both right and recordable.

A lot of employment background checks based on people’s names that can generate results that don’t even belong to the applicant being searched. The most common names are more likely to have duplicate or unrelated retrieved. There records taken out by comparing other identifiable personal information like the birth place or date of birth. There is always a risk of misidentification when there are billions and billions of people walking around in the universe. But rules still exists to protect applicants by providing ways to current any mistakes and dispute the processes and ways.

What is Fair Credit Reporting Act?

Fair Credit Reporting Act is the main piece of legislation that controls employment background checks, but this act applies to more than just credit reports. It has any and all information being reported to employers by the ones who provides employment background checks.

Employment background checks are also known as consumer reports or investigative consumer reports which differ on the type of information being searched. The act requires employers to take a few steps that include consent and notice before conducting employment background checks; the act also set the specific process and ways followed by employers when they take adverse action against applicants like denying them employment, promotion or terminating their employment.

Guidance on Pre-Employment Screening and Selection

This will guide and help employers when they interview, choose and accept new employees or even in promoting a current employee from within the company. But before the interviews begin, employers should take steps to make sure that they reached all the thoroughfares of the pool of qualified applicants.

• Employers must take in mind that the application form is their calling card. They must know that any questions on the application form unrelated to the job will appear as somewhat discriminatory and will dissuade good and qualified employees from applying to their company.
• Newspaper and magazine advertising will attract women primarily because they are the main readers. Members of minority groups, people of different sexual orientations and people with disabilities are people of the community who communicates a clear message that qualified applicants from disadvantage groups are welcome to the employer’s company and be treated with respect.

Interviews and Notes

Interviews are always a part of pre-employment screening and conducted by employers to learn more about the suitability of their applicants who are under consideration for a specific job. But sometimes the information being searched during the interviews are not even relevant to the job now available and let discriminatory elements effect the pre-employment screening and selection process. Discriminatory questions like:

• Where the applicant was born which has nothing to do with their ability to do the job available.
• Asking their height and weight, which are not for measure of physical strength, but for screening out women or some ethnic or racial groups that is much smaller in stature.

How to Beat Computerized Pre-Employment Screening

Computerized pre-employment screening is a software that will tell the truth and may disqualify applicants, especially if applicants lie it will catch up to them in the interview process. There is a little creativity and a lot of perseverance that would get applicants past the computer and into the interview process.

When Pre-Employment Screening Software Replaces Employers

Understanding why companies use pre-employment screening software to weed out bad and unqualified applicants. There are about 13 million people in the united states that are looking for work and some of them are applying for jobs that does not meet their skill sets or experience. The HR department of every company cannot sort all the applications of every person who applied.

But pre-employment screening software does not do the job as well as a human. It can’t apply any judgment or pass along applications from applicants who meet some of the requirements stated. Or the problem is narrowing the labor pool by employers who create pre-employment screening requirements that are too high for the job they are hiring for.

Connecting Is the Solution

If you really want a job, getting screened out by pre-employment screening software should not stop you from going after the job. But lying is neither the solution, nor spending a lot of time trying to cheat the pre-employment screening software.