Pre-Employment Screening Guidelines and Legal Risks

From the smallest to the largest companies and employers who understand the dual benefits of hiring the best employees and providing them a safe and secure workplace both financially and of course, physically along with their shareholders, the customers and the public in which they run in are the keys to their success. The main reason is to know a lot of information as much as possible about the potential employees and to know the information before hiring them. Hiring new employees is an important task for any company.

An employer who performed a thorough pre-employment screening of their job applicants is more likely to bring into the company a highly talented employee who will be one of the company’s greatest assets. Unfortunately, if pre-employment screening is not a part of the hiring process the employer will risk exposing his or her company to someone who might become the company’s greatest liability.

Why Do Pre-Employment Screening?

There are a great number of reasons why employers should conduct pre-employment screening and there are two main compelling factors that will make companies add this tool in their hiring process.

1. Making The Best Hiring Decision

There are some job applicants that will only tell employers what they want to hear. A good storyteller or a good writer can invent the perfect resume employers dream about. There are two separate online surveys on the inaccuracy of résumés. After conducting the said surveys, there are reports that showed 61 percent of the HR Professionals said that they find the inaccuracies after the background checks were already carried out.

By thoroughly verifying the information given during the pre-employment screening process, companies can improve the chances they are hiring the right job applicant who portrayed their experience, skills, and background honestly and accurately. Using pre-employment screening to verify the histories of each job applicant helps employers to make good and safe decisions based upon facts.

Adding Integrity Testing to Pre-Employment Screening

There is an estimation that at least six thousand business establishments that use integrity tests as a part of the pre-employment screening and selection process for hiring new job applicants for employment. Analysts familiar with this issue believe the tests are only used to screen job applicants for jobs that need fewer skills like employees in a convenience store and retail clerks.

This definition does not necessarily resolve ambiguities over the universe of tests that are actually just integrity tests. There is a controversy that surrounds the real meaning of honesty and integrity in the workplace; there are arguments over integrity tests and if they differ from other staff tests in the kinds of inferences they support or in the design; and there is only a little information on how honesty and integrity tests are actually conducted in hiring decisions.

What Are Integrity Tests?

Integrity tests are using almost all paper and pencil instruments, administered to job applicants at some stage of pre-employment screening and selection process. Some of these tests are Overt Integrity Tests which are clearly designed to query job applicants about their attitudes toward certain manifestations of lies and dishonesty, especially theft and some information is about their past and their involvement in such activities. An example of the questions in the tests asks the job applicant how honest they are, how prompt and if the job applicant thinks stealing small items from work count as stealing.

Effective Pre-Employment Screening

Competitive economic environment in our times, firms can’t afford being sidetracked by problems involving employees like workplace violence, embellished résumés, theft, harassment, injury claims or embezzlement. The increasing growth of employers turning to pre-employment screening as the critical risk management tool to have chance to avoid having hiring bad employees in the first place,

But at the same time, all companies are more cost-conscious as well. With the obvious benefits of pre-employment screening, the management always expects human resources professionals and security to produce big results with fewer resources. The Human Resources professionals and security are facing big challenge and they are finding new ways to carry out pre-employment screening program that is very effective and very cost-effective.

Four Goals of Pre-Employment Screening

One: Avoiding Negligent Hiring

The pre-employment screening program must show that employers use due diligence in the hiring process which means that employers needs to take reasonable steps to find a potential employee that is fit for the available job and protect the employer from negligent hiring lawsuit claims.

Two: Accurate Information

An effective pre-employment screening program gets factual information about the potential employee, to go with the impressions obtained from the interview part of the process. It is also a valuable tool for judging the accuracy of the potential employee’s résumés.

Three: Discouraging Applicants Involved With Crimes

Pre-employment screening is a tool that scares job applicants with something to hide, applicants with very serious criminal records will less likely to apply at a company that announces they have pre-employment screening

Four: Encouraging Applicants to Tell the Truth

Pre-employment screening should encourage job applicants to tell the truth in their résumés, job applications and interviews. And since they know the companies they are applying to have pre-employment screening and background checks, they can uncover information about themselves.

The Pre-Employment Screening Process

Employers and their viability often depend on the quality and reliability of their employees. Employers often spend a significant amount of money hiring and interviewing potential employees in trying to accept job applicants who are best suited to do certain jobs.

Employers also use pre-employment screening of potential employees to limit potential legal liability. Although there are several ways in which the law can hold employers liable for their employees’ actions, the tort of negligent hiring and the doctrine of vicarious liability are the most significant.

Having pre-employment screening process that is effective for hiring new agency staff might be the most critical and important step in hiring and retaining high quality employees and minimizing potential liability exposure and workplace violations and wrongdoings like:

• Discrimination
• Negligent Hiring
• Employee Accidents and Injuries
• Vehicle Accidents
• Workplace Theft
• Workplace Violence
• General Liability Claims

By proactively implementing and adopting a pre-employment screening process, a lot of these risks need avoiding or reduced by having specific policies and ways in place which are consistently applied throughout all departments within the firm.

Investigation

Agencies need to consider all available methods of pre-employment screening and decide which are prudent and possible for the certain jobs available and being sought which includes volunteers and contract workers. Written job descriptions need to exist for paid jobs. Every job description needs to name those essential functions of the job. Essential functions are the basic duties that an employee, with or without reasonable accommodation, needs to do. Employers should carefully look at every job to decide which task or functions are important and essential to performance, which is very important before taking an action in employment like advertising, recruiting, hiring, firing and promoting.

Evolution of Pre-Employment Screening to Mitigate Risk

For employers hiring new employees is a rushed process, especially if the job available is a critical mission. But neglecting to follow through on pre-employment screening will be more disastrous to the company than having an empty employee seat for a couple of months.

A limited pre-employment screening, a lack of checking the facts or single-minded policy about the hiring process could leave a company rushing the hiring process and pick an unsuitable new employee or worse with a tsunami of new liabilities and risks.

The Pre-Employment Screening Basics

There is no bare minimum for pre-employment screening, companies can do whatever they want, but that doesn’t mean they should leave pre-employment screening out of the equation all together. Employers need to look for the right fit for the job available and pre-employment screening will help to make sure that the potential employee is the right one.

Since every description of jobs is different, each place of employment needs to conduct different types of pre-employment screening and evaluation. Employers need to have a standard benchmark pre-employment screening process fir all levels of employment, from the retail cashier job to the CEO Job. A criminal background check is a recommendation in checking for any place the potential employee lived for the last seven years, including the state, city, county and multi-jurisdictional databases and educational verification.