As any business owner can tell you, part of running a successful business is hiring the right employees. Unfortunately, this is often one of the hardest parts of running a successful business too. For example, sometimes people do great interviews and have wonderful resumes, but turn out to be poor fits for the position once they have been hired. And that’s the best case scenarios. In the worst case scenarios, employers don’t learn about an employee’s criminal past (as an example) until after he or she has been hired. This is why pre employment screening is so important.
Basically, pre employment screening means checking out a potential employee’s credentials, criminal history, past employers, driving records, the list can go on and on. This can be as simple as making phone calls, or as detailed as doing a full background check like mentioned above. The depth of the screening really depends on the business owner. For example, a daycare owner would want to do a full background check, since the employee would be working with children. But a hotel owner might only need to check the person’s references; but again, most of the time it’s a matter of choice.
So, as a business owner, how do you know what type of pre employment screening to do? A good rule of thumb is to consider the position, and then ask yourself what you would want to know about the person who got the job. Would you want to know about any criminal behavior? Would you want to know about past job performance? How about driving records? You can also ask other business owners what types of screenings they do. Most business outsource pre employment screening and background checks to a third party. There are companies that do a good job and there are some that cut corners and don’t care about being thorough. We consider our company to be best screening company in the business not because we are over confident or arrogant but because we know we do the right type of searches and do compromise or cut corners to get business. We have tools and process that can decrease turnaround time and save companies a lot of money at the same time do a much better background check.
Whether you decide to do them on your own or hire someone else to do them, it’s extremely important to do pre employment screenings on all potential employees. This is the easiest way to learn more about a potential employee, and hopefully save yourself time and money by hiring the right person the first time. Not to mention that these screenings can protect you from hiring someone who isn’t who they claim to be.
