Hiring the right staff is the most critical responsibility of any human resources (HR) manager. Companies rely heavily on their employees for the success of their business, and so they want to make sure they hire the best available candidate. Because of this, the hiring process is often vigorous and thorough.
However, many job seekers will hide details from their CV's and in interviews so that they make the best impression they can on employers. Employers who do not diligently investigate candidates beyond what they present on their CV and during the interview process risk hiring incompetent staff who can be a threat not only to the other employees but the company as well.
What if the candidates you are interviewing are from another country altogether? How do you make sure they are honest about their identities and qualifications?
The answer to all of this is a background check. Only with a background check can you ensure that you are making informed decisions and hiring the right person for the job.
What is a Background Check?
It is a complete investigation into someone's background, whether they are a person or a company. The background screening process includes reviewing legal records, financial records, compliance and regulatory records and most importantly criminal records. When the subject of the check is a person and not a business, it will include criminal records, credit history, past employment, licenses, education and other qualifications.
Why Your Company Needs To Conduct Background Checks?
Below we provide some of the most common reasons why your company should conduct background checks on new employees:
It Provides Peace of Mind
As an employer, you always want to ensure that you can trust your employees. But how do you know who is trustworthy?
At interviews, candidates can lie or exaggerate about their qualities and qualifications so they can present themselves as the best candidate for the job.
This is also true of their resume where they can omit or add any detail they wish to make themselves look better in the eyes of the employer. Not to mention that the interview process is not long enough to really get to know someone.
Background checks are the only way to get a complete picture of your potential employee and answer the question of ‘is this candidate trustworthy’, and ‘are they the person I want to hire’?
It Ensures Due Diligence and Avoids Liability.
When employers do not perform background checks before hiring new candidates, they can be held liable for their employee's misgivings.
For example, you hire a new manager for your accounting department without conducting a thorough background check. A few months after your manager's start, you notice that money is starting to go missing from the company's accounts. As you investigate, you discover that your new manager, who has now stopped showing up for work had previous associations with money laundering groups.
Because you didn't follow due diligence procedures and skipped the background check now you have hired someone who has harmed the company in multiple ways. They stole from the company and there is no chance of getting that money back, the company could face fines, and its reputation may be damaged from hiring a criminal.
It Reveals Previous Criminal history
One of the most crucial reasons that employers conduct background checks is to discover if the candidate has a previous criminal history. Employers want to ensure that they do their due diligence and do not unwillingly hire someone who has engaged in any acts that harmed another person (e.g., sexual assault) or their previous employer (e.g., theft).
More importantly, an employer will want to protect their company by making sure that the candidate does not have any associations with money laundering or with terrorist groups. If they don't do this, they risk putting their company in danger in several ways. For example, they get fined for not following both employment and regulatory compliance; the candidate uses company resources to commit crimes which may result in the company damaging their reputation.
A candidate's criminal history is so important that many companies will implement a policy of conducting this check each time there is a change in an employee's work condition such as they get promoted or transferred. By doing this, the company can ensure that the employee has remained 'clean' during his or her employment.
Many companies will use specialised third-party services to conduct background checks because they are better equipped to conduct in-depth and precise background screening. Using a service provider is especially handy when hiring international candidates because each country will have its laws regarding the availability and access of criminal records as well as discrimination laws that dictate how an employer can use the information provided in criminal records.
Companies who provide identity verification services will be more knowledgeable and experienced with these laws and therefore, working with them saves time and effort allowing HR managers to focus on other tasks.
How to conduct a background check?
The best way to conduct a background check is to hire a company that specialises in due diligence procedures like identity verification and have them perform these checks on your behalf.
Want to know what employee background checks look for? This is where Cedar Rose can help you! Our database covers 230+ countries, 160 million individuals and 12 million companies, making it easier for us to conduct due diligence, background screening and identity verification checks.