If you’re looking for services in Saint Clair County, IL for employee background checks, it’s probably time for you to add to your team. Over 90% of employers rely on background screening services as part of their hiring process–but why do business owners looking for new hires want to perform a pre-employment background check?

Pre-employment background screenings will help ensure that the employee is qualified for the position and has a clean criminal record. In this article, we will discuss what’s included in a pre-employment background check, how long they take, and why they are necessary. We’ll also answer some common questions about background checks, such as whether or not they can be delayed.

It can be tempting to think as a business owner that you can skip the effort, time, and expense of a pre-employment background check—but there’s a reason they are so popular amongst hiring teams! Saint Clair County, IL employment background checks can save employers everything from the time, energy, and resources necessary to hire someone who may or may not be a good fit to the potential for legal blowback from disgruntled applicants who don’t make the cut.

Pre-employment background checks are necessary because they can dramatically reduce the likelihood of hiring an employee that will be a liability rather than an asset. Screening your employees before your hire them is a simple but effective way that you can protect your existing employees, your customers, and your assets. Plus, it saves the time of hiring and firing people continuously until you happen to find the right fit.

A thorough background check can yield a lot of information about a candidate’s history. This information is meant to help inform an employer if a candidate would be a good asset to their team. The depth of employee background screening varies from organization to organization, but most will include:

1.     Verification of identity: This can vary in complexity from scanning a passport and driver’s license to tracing a person’s social security number. Verifying a candidate’s identity is an important first step in establishing trust with a potential employee.

2.     Credential/Academic verification: This step takes a deep dive into a person’s academic history, including data from colleges or universities the candidate may have attended. This ensures that the degree on their resume matches a real degree from an accredited school. A background screening will also include any licenses or certifications from known organizations that may add to a candidate’s suitability.

3.     Verification of employment: By looking at a person’s employment history, a business owner may have a clearer understanding of an applicant’s skills, credentials, and possibly even work ethic or lasting power at a job. This can include verbal confirmations over the phone with previous employers or establishing contact with personnel in HR.

4.     Credit information: This part of the background check looks at an applicant’s current credit score and their associated credit history.

5.     Criminal history: A thorough background screening service will look at a person’s criminal record on a county/state, federal, and even international level to ensure they are not on any global watch lists.

6.     Driving history: Does the candidate have any outstanding tickets or blemishes on their driving record? This type of screening is particularly relevant for businesses that will require employees to utilize company vehicles. A clean driving record is cheaper and easier to insure than a complicated one!

Whether you are a hopeful applicant for a job or an employer who values their time, you’re likely wondering just how long all of this information-gathering may take. Because background screening can vary so much in terms of how deeply a company dives into a person’s impact and history, there is no one-size-fits-all answer for how long a background check takes.

If you really want to know how long a pre-employment background check takes, the process can last anywhere from 2-20 days, and will be on the longer end should international information need to be gathered. However, if you’re an average American citizen looking for an average American job, your background check likely won’t take more than five days.

Because gathering all of this information takes time to initially collect and then verify, it is possible for background checks to take some time to complete—or even become significantly delayed. While this can sometimes be mitigated through proper communication between the applicant and the employer leading up to the screening, there are also times when it is unforeseeable and unavoidable. Reasons a background check might be delayed include:

·      Partial or missing records: Sometimes, when institutions transition between paper trails and electronic records, information gets lost in translation…other times, records are simply not properly managed. This can cause delays in background screening, as it adds to the time necessary to verify a candidate’s history.

·      Many jobs or residences: If a candidate has done a lot of moving around and making changes to their career or lodgings, this can increase the amount of time spent verifying their credit and employment track record.

·      Common names: It can be hard to verify the identity of a common name, as there are so many profiles to sift through. Candidates can simplify this process by providing more information or known aliases should they have a particularly common name.

·      International information gathering: Candidates who have lived, worked, or studied in multiple countries will often experience delays in their background screening. This is because gathering international information can sometimes have added complications, such as a language barrier.

·      More than one candidate background screening: If an employer is looking at the history of multiple candidates for employment at once, it may take longer for a background screening company to provide complete, thorough, and verified results.

It is important to note that before a background check can be carried out, an employer must ask for a candidate’s consent and inform them of their rights according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Let’s say you’ve applied for a job, waited for five or so days, and your background check comes back with outdated or inaccurate information. The good news is, as a candidate, you do have rights. The FCRA states that a prospective employee should be allowed at least five days to present new information, and that the employer must take action to verify this new information. This can cause further delays in the background screening process, but can make the difference between landing a position and being let go.

Clearly, employee background checks cover a lot of ground, ranging in everything from driving abstracts to certifications and academic history. While this process can take up some time and extend the hiring process, most employers find it is a worthwhile endeavor that ultimately saves them time, energy, and expense on training and hiring employees that might not end up a good fit. For more information on your rights as decreed by the FCRA should you wish to contest the results of your background check, click here!

Are you looking for Saint Clair County, IL employee background checks? Contact Alpha and Omega Background Screening Solutions today for a consultation!