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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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.

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?

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!