Small Business Brief

Employees

7 Reasons to Include Pre-Employment Screening in Your Business Model


Hiring employees is one of the most important decisions you can make. Don’t go into it blindly. Here are seven reasons you’ll want to add pre-employment screening methods into your business practices.

Whether you’re building a team from the ground up or simply trying to fill a few positions in a growing department, you have to give the interview and onboarding process its due diligence.

This means taking the time to look for candidates and doing multiple interview rounds. It means having good questions prepared for them and getting multiple opinions on each candidate, too. But, patience and interview panels aren’t enough.

Another thing you absolutely have to do is run a pre-employment screening. You can do this during the final rounds of interview or as the final step before officially welcoming your chosen candidate to the team.

Don’t think pre-screening for a job matters much once a candidate has made it to this step? Here are seven reasons why you can’t afford to overlook the screening process.

1. To Check for Criminal History

Most people don’t want a criminal on their team, while others recognize there are plenty of people who have done jail time before and turned their life around. Still, you owe it to yourself to find this out about a candidate.

This is especially true if their criminal record sends off a red flag for something they may be doing in your business. For example, someone with a history of theft may not be the best person to trust with handling cash or inventory. Similarly, it’s hard to wrap your head around how much of a team player a person can be if they have violent offenses on their record.

Thankfully, it’s easy to get this information once you’ve realized you need it. Find out everything you need to know about a person’s criminal history with GoLookUp.

2. To Check for Current Criminal Activity

There are things that happened in a person’s past, and then there are the choices they’re actively continuing to make. Choices like the use of illegal drugs or prescription pills that you need to be aware of.

Drugs hinder a person’s ability to perform at work. Not to mention, having an addict on your team can compromise the integrity and overall productivity of the whole business. It doesn’t matter what an addict’s drug of choice is or how often they use it, they can’t be doing that if they plan to work with you.

3. To Get a Credit Check

This next reason to do pre-employment checks may come as a bit of a surprise. What does a candidate’s personal finance history have to do with their ability to perform well at work? More than you might think.

A poor credit history is a sign of an inability to have self-discipline and make sound decisions. While credit doesn’t directly tie into your business, such qualities can hold your team back.

On the other hand, good credit shows responsibility, critical thinking, and a futuristic mindset. These are qualities that can bring significant value to your big picture.

Keep in mind that the numbers don’t always tell the whole story. There could be a good reason for a person to have had their credit slip here and there. But, the numbers definitely don’t lie.

4. To Discover Reasons for Leaving Prior Jobs

The reasons for having bad credit aren’t as important as the reasons a candidate is interviewing with you. Make sure you find out the real reason your top choices have left their previous jobs.

Some of them may have quit in order to make a career change, some could have had too many differences with their higher-ups, and others could have been fired. It’s best to choose a candidate who knows how to close doors with grace rather than burn bridges.

Plus, the last thing you want is to bring someone on board only to find out they were fired from their last job for the same tricks they’re trying to pull at your company.

5. To Assess the Skills on a Candidate’s Resume

Most candidates know to be straightforward about their reasons for interviewing. But then, some of them still try to fluff up their resume with skills and qualifications that aren’t entirely true.

When you do a background check, you’re able to tell just how much knowledge each candidate has of a certain software or important task. This allows you to set clear expectations based on what skills are actually true and which ones a person does not have a real handle of.

6. To Authorize Rights to Work

Another reason to do pre-screening for a job is to check that an employee is authorized to work. This is a pretty simple part of the screening process, but it’s still one you can’t ignore.

Authorizing rights to work ensures you’re bringing someone on who has all of their legal needs in order. This goes for immigrants and American-born citizens alike.

Immigrants need to take certain steps in order to get job authorization, while people born in the states can have their rights to work in certain industries taken away. This happens if someone is stripped of their license to practice things like law or medicine.

7. To Protect Your Company

The final reason to do an employee screening is to protect your company. This applies to your business in a few different ways.

The first is the protection of the employees you already have on board. Bringing an addict, a violent person or an outright irresponsible individual can damage the quality of work for others. It can lead to verbal or physical altercations in addition to having your current employees pick of the slack of what this person is supposed to be doing.

The next way screening protects your company is by maintaining your brand image. Screening allows you to choose the absolute best candidate because it gives you the whole story about a person. Thanks to this, you can be sure whoever you hire is going to uphold the best practices and unique culture of your company.

Pre-Employment Screening for Interns, Entry-Level Positions, and Management Personnel

Remember, the reasons to do a pre-employment screening mentioned above apply to everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re just looking for a summer intern or you need the best CFO possible – nor how soon you need to fill these positions.

Fill them as best you can by getting a screening done before you officially hire someone. If you do happen to be in the market for a CFO, or you aren’t sure if you need one, click here to find out more about the position and why it’s necessary for your team.



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