Why Pre-Employment Background Checks Are So Important

Imagine opening the front door to your house and inviting strangers in to come stay for awhile. Unless you had good reason to do so, you would probably find this act risky and dangerous. These individuals could rob your home or hurt your loved ones. Inviting people to work for you without a pre-employment background check can expose you to similar dangers.

Matching Facts
During the interview process, you have likely asked these candidates a number of pertinent questions about themselves and their job history. A pre-employment background check allow you to corroborate at least some of the information. When you see that candidates provided you with false information during their interviews, you have a sure sign that turning these individuals into employees is a bad idea.

Criminal Checks
Whether or not you want to hire individuals who committed and were sentenced for certain crimes is up to you. However, you likely at least want to know what the nature of those situations were. Running a background check on potential employees can bring up that information. Still though, you must keep in mind that background checks do not necessarily cover the candidates’ entire lives; you need to see how far back the reports go, and that holds true no matter what information you’re researching.

Narrowing the Pool
You should let people know that you will administer a pre-employment background check early on. Including this information in the job posting is wise. That way, individuals who know that they have something to hide will likely not apply for the position at all. Therefore, you can begin to narrow down candidates before you even begin to look at resumes.

Learning information about your employees is important because you want to make sure that you know whom you are bringing into your company. A pre-employment background check is one of the ways to gain at least some of the facts that you need.