Employee Screening for Potential New Hires

The vast majority of employees are honest, hard-working people who are an asset to your business.

But there are some who will steal from you, commit fraud upon you or even harm you or your other employees.

Employee screening can help you avoid these occasional bad apples entirely.

An individual’s past actions are a good indication of future actions. If an applicant’s references say she’s a go-getter who’s always looking for solutions to problems, you can pretty much count on her doing the same for you. If another applicant’s references say he’s a wonderful guy and will do whatever you ask him to, but you need to ask him, you can be sure you’ll have a nice guy on your hands who needs a lot of supervision.

Unless you perform a thorough employee screening by performing an employee background check on an applicant, you could be putting yourself at risk. That go-getter could have falsified her resume and asked her cousin to sing her praises as he pretended to be a former employer.

An employee background check can help you reduce the risk of hiring someone with a criminal record.

In a thorough employee screening you can search to find any criminal history an applicant might have.

An employee screening also will back up – or disprove – any glowing references you’ve received on an applicant. In addition, many employers today are slow to give out any information more than name, position held and dates of employment because of litigation concerns.

You will need to ask permission of your applicant to conduct the background check. You also should be judicious in how thorough your employee screening will be: A check on an applicant’s criminal history is a good idea for an accountant, security guard, or teller – anyone whose position involves the money or the safety of people.

An employee screening will help you hire honest and hard-working people. It’s no guarantee an employee will never cause you trouble, but it’s an important step in weeding out the less-than-stellar new hire.