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.

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?

Many employers are heavily reliant on employment background checks. Part of the reason is of course the influence of 9/11 but employers are checking much deeper in a prospective employee’s past than whether or not that person belonged to any subversive groups.

For instance, once a prospective employee gives a prospective employer the right to perform a background check, today they will check on much more than the previous job history or their education. The possible employer in addition to these checks, may very well look into such records as court records, military records, medical records, driving records and even the credit history of the prospective employee.

Much of that information is readily available to someone looking for another on the Internet, and many investigative companies do just that, but if an employer wishes an in depth report on a person, then the prospective employee must sign a specific consent form. Delving into medical records, for instance, will require a specific consent form. It is an extremely rare occurrence though for a prospective employee to refuse to sign that form, as unemployment grows lately. Once consent is given to this kind of investigative background check, at times there is a possibility of non-relevant information.

As an American, a prospective employee is protected by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer advocacy organization, and of course the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Protection is also available through the Privacy Act of 1974, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Always remember that whatever is posted on the Internet is open to public investigation. Many employers now check the Internet for such things as what is posted on MySpace, for instance. It’s not so much as the possibility of losing privacy that matters, but often it represents a part of our national security. Thus be aware of what your employment background check may reveal, but know that it also protects you and your family.

I am renowned for being very objective when I write about something, so when asked to write about online background checks, it stands to reason that I would turn to one of the large search sites, and put in a search for “online background check.” The returns were positively shocking, as it brought back a possible 68,900,000 possibilities.

All that this points to is that there are apparently millions of groups or people performing online searches for online background checks! Assuming that if even 1/3rd of the results are online scams, that’s 22,737,000 possible scam sites.

If you are searching for an online background check on someone, you are better off relying on your attorney for instance, to have a professional gather together information for you. Chances are that rather than using an online background check, he will personally know of or utilize someone who is a bona fide investigator.

I am not sure if it’s a case of one bad apple spoiling the bunch numerous times, or if there are actually a plethora of scam artists involved in online background checks, but there are so many complaints registered against online background check sites, that one becomes extremely wary of using them. Some sites even have large sites built specifically to complain about one solitary company.

The problem it seems, is if you need a background check and you try to do it online, you have no point of reference for what’s reposted. For instance there have been numerous occurrences of someone doing an online background check on someone who has an intensive rap sheet, only to be told that there are no arrest records on that individual.

Thus, if you intend to use an online background check, it would behoove you to check with the Better Business Bureau, and do an extensive search yourself first by Googling the individual, and also Googling the company you intend to use. You’ll have to be objective if a few bad results show up on the company, as often it’s a matter of plain sour grapes that occasioned the report, but if you receive an avalanche of reports search again!

Most landlords want to have a reliable tenant check done on prospective tenants, but many do not know how to do so. Turning to the online services may or may not turn up a scam tenant check or perhaps a truly reliable tenant check.

Most companies that are legitimate tenant check companies will require you to receive written authorization from the prospective tenant, and they will want it for their own files. A good number of the times, the tenant has to agree to such investigations of his banking information, criminal history, rental history, current and past residences, employment verifications, and of course the consumer’s credit report.

Usually the cost to the owner of the property is minimal, as opposed to losing two or three months worth of rental payments, and having performed such a check usually results in a somewhat better caliber of tenants. It may also be useful in preventing tenant turnover.

Use of a tenant check often results in having to perform fewer evictions, experiencing lesser apartment damage, keeping the operating costs of owning tenant-occupied property down. Also, there are a few state laws that may create a property forfeiture if you allow your tenant to occupy the property with the knowledge that the tenant has been arrested for making or selling drugs in the past, or even be in possession of large amounts of drugs with the intent to deliver. There have even been times when the owner of the property was found guilty of allowing drug trafficking on their property.

It should be more than obvious to you now why you should use tenant check verification on any prospective tenants. Remember to always have the tenant’s written authorization prior to performing a tenant check. This will often guarantee that the information you receive is good information from a reliable tenant check company.