Background Checks & Employee Screening

There are a plethora of reasons why an employer may desire an employee background check. Of course, the 9/11 terrorist acts have contributed highly to the reasons, as identity verification becomes more important in employers’ eyes. We have become a nation of commonly accepted employee background checks because of it.

Strangely enough all of the negligent lawsuits that have come through the courts also have caused employers to look carefully in a prospective employees background. Not that the employee may sue, but that the employee represents the company, and thus if that employee is negligent in some way, the employer will find themselves liable.

If a business entails dealing with children, most states now have stringent requirements in order to have criminal background checks to be sure that there are no improprieties in the employee’s background. In most states, this now even includes volunteers.

Corporate scandals, such as the Enron scandals, have spurred background checks for executives since 2002. Companies are now being found liable more and more for their executives.

The Internet has brought us many wondrous things, but unfortunately it has also brought us many fabrications as well. Part of a good employee background check will bring forth these fabrications and embellishments. This use of the Internet also helps those who perform background checks to cross-index their search through the Internet. For instance, many employers have been known to look over sites such as MySpace and Facebook to see what is in the profiles of applicants.

Security clearance is yet another reason why employee background checks are necessary. For many jobs it is even legally mandated. The reasons entail each of the paragraphs above.

Years back there was no such career as a compliance manager, but today each type of business entails having to comply with different county, state or federal laws as bankers must do for example, or your local Doctor’s office with HIPAA, an accountability act. More and more background checks are now including any employee noncompliance records.

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Often those who are seeking a state license, for example, are told that prior to receiving the license they must first submit to an FBI background check. Usually in order for this to be processed, it also means that they need to be fingerprinted, as that is the basis of the FBI background check.
An FBI Identification Record, will be rendered to the employer or licensing authority. This record is sometimes referred to as a rap sheet, or as a Criminal History Record. It will list assorted information that is taken from any fingerprint submissions as held by the FBI in association with arrests and occasionally military service, naturalization or federal employment.
At any time the fingerprints are correlated to an arrest, then the record of the reorganization will include the name(s) of the agency that consigned those fingerprints to the FBI, as well as including the arrest charges, the date of arrest, and the ultimate disposition of the arrest, if it is known to the FBI. All of the arrest data that is included in an Identification Record will have been obtained solely from disposition reports ,any fingerprint submissions, and other reports turned in by agencies that have some sort of criminal justice responsibilities.
Many people believe, erroneously, that an FBI Background Check will show a prospective employer or the state licensing board, dark secrets held by the FBI on them. Remember again that it is only your history of arrests, your RAP sheet, as it were. No more, no less.

Some people are also worried if they have had various juvenile arrests, for example for statutory rape. Or, they might believe that those particular records have been actually totally expunged, and thus juvenile arrests will definitely not show up on an FBI Identification Record. The truth of the matter is if you were ever fingerprinted for anything, it will show up on the FBI Background Check, though it may show a disposition of expungement, for instance.

There are a number of reasons that someone may request a people background check. Of course there are numerous requests for employment reasons, but also today in our Internet influenced world, some people wish to check up on someone they’ve been introduced to online, for instance. Or you may be searching for a house sitter and you wish to verify that the person you are hiring is on the up and without a criminal background. Maybe you are only checking up on someone to use as a babysitter to whom you will entrust your child?

Commonly too, it is a landlord verifying that the people background check brings forward no negatives on a possible tenant. Sometimes it’s someone wanting to do a trace on a bad debt.

The best recommendation you may receive on who to use to do a people background check is your attorney. Attorneys frequently need to do such background checks themselves, and they can give you a reliable and honest company to accomplish it.

Stay away from the “free” background check offers, for you’ll soon find that there is no free lunch. Most of the companies offering such services for free normally send you only very commonly found information and then they wish more of an investment from you to carry on and then will possibly provide you with information that you can actually use.

As in anything else in this world, it is the honest and reliable that pay for the various scams out there. This is especially true when dealing with online background checks.

One of the ways of finding such an honest and reliable company to do a people background check is finding a company who wants the Social Security number of the person that you are doing the background check upon. After all having a Social Security number to double check on the information received is an ideal manner to verify that the right person has been reported upon. It often points to honest reliability of the reporter too.

Before you deal with any company, it’s always a good idea to look on the Internet and see if there are any complaints being registered against them. Now, I have not even heard of NetDetective prior to this article, but when I began to investigate them I found so many complaint sites specific to NetDetective that my curiosity was definitely raised.

What I found is that there are enough complaints on NetDetective to fill a small library. Now, I am always fair minded and objective, when it comes to things found on the Internet, and I know that any company no matter how honest it is, is bound to have some complaints against it, given the very nature of the Internet, but the magnitude of these complaints totally floored me. There were entire sites devoted to just complaints and warnings about using NetDetective.

Most of the complaints centered around the fact that they charge an initial $29.95 to perform background checks, but all you receive is a basic name and possibly outdated addresses. According to complaints, many people have found more information on a name search on Google.

Those complaining then state that they were told that to gather further information, they would have to pay an additional $10.00 for the NetDetective Pro upgrade. Much worse are the reports that you must state that you approve for them to charge you yet another additional $29.95 after three days have elapsed!

Other complaints are frequently listed as giving out erroneous or missing information. People who are related to other people who have a long rap sheet put in their relative’s name, but the NetDetective found no reports of them ever having been incarcerated and no convictions were found. One individual said that it gave him information on where his grandfather was currently living. The only problem was that he had been at his grandfather’s funeral 5 years ago! Caveat Emptor—Buyer Beware!

Over and over again, people have “fallen for” various things offered for free on the Internet. There are free offers for email address lookups, free credit reports, free telephone ring tones being marketed via television, but mostly online. Part of the reason why Snopes, an urban legends reference site, is so popular is that so many people believe that anything on the Net can be taken at face value.

Let’s put it this way, no company can survive when offering everything for free, now can it? Those free ring tones, for example, when looked at carefully are actually getting you to pay for them. Not only do you have to pay for them, but also invariably you find that you will pay for them on a monthly basis!

The same can be said of free criminal background checks. If you use one of these, consistently what you find is that while they do send you some information about the person, it is often totally devoid of any detail you are searching for. To get further detail you will have to pay for it. Prices for such information vary widely, of course, and at times there are also scams involved.

Rather than point your cursor at a free criminal check, and possibly get scammed, it would be much safer to use a paid professional criminal records check. Unfortunately, the free criminal background checks can be filed under the “you get what you pay for” category.

The other side of the coin too, is that you have a legitimate reason why you wish to run a criminal background check on someone. Perhaps it is that you are going to be dating an unknown who was found for you at an online date site? Maybe you are looking into hiring a nanny for your children and want to make sure they do not have an arrest record for child abuse? Or you may be looking for a house sitter or at home dog sitter while you go away to Europe for 30 days? Imagine putting yourself in that position and having relied on a “free” criminal background check?