How to Make Pre-Employment Screening a Part of Your Hiring Routine

Today's Human Resource World Requires Employment Screening
In today’s human resources world, making a hiring decision involves a bit more than simply reviewing an application and spending a brief time interviewing the individual. In order to be a competitive player in the business world, it is essential you hire the best and most qualified individuals for the job. In a world full of fraud, in order to find the right employee for your business’ needs you need to go beyond the resume and application. Instead of taking what it says on a piece of paper at face value, you need to take significant steps to verify that the provided information is accurate and true. To do this, you need to spend some time conducting various means of pre-employment screening.

What is Pre-Employment Screening?
Pre-employment screening is the process of verifying the information presented in a resume and job application prior to making a hiring decision. Since pre-employment screening is now a necessary part of the hiring process, your business needs to make it a part of its regular hiring routine. The first step in doing this is to understand what types of pre-employment screening tools are available for your use.

Pre-Employment Screening and Criminal Background Checks
One of the most common forms of pre-employment screening tools is the criminal background check. With a criminal background check you can search the criminal history of a potential employee to verify the information they provided is true. Since often times applicants are dishonest about their criminal past, it is important to conduct a criminal history check to ensure the applicant does not have a history of such crimes as theft or assault. Hiring an individual with a criminal history could put your business’ financial success and safety at risk.

Professional Reference Verification's Encourage Honesty
The professional reference verification is another common form of pre-employment screening. The professional reference verification gives you the means to not only discuss the employee with the listed reference, but to check to make sure the listed individual is qualified to act as a reference. Without a professional reference check, you have no way of knowing whether or not the listed reference is in fact who they are claimed to be. Another important pre-employment verification that should occur before making a hiring decision is to verify the applicant’s employment history. Like the professional reference section, without a verification of this information there is no way for you to know for sure whether or not the applicant has actually worked where they say they have. Further, an employment verification search will also provide you with important information on places the applicant has worked but failed to list on the job application form. Other available pre-employment screening tools include a sex offender search, social security number verification, educational credential check and due diligence search.

Professional Help to the Rescue
Once you have decided what pre-employment screening tools you want to utilize, the next step is to contact a professional background check company. Using a professional background check company gives you access to online background check search engines that will survey numerous databases in order to satisfy your pre-employment screening needs.