"You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover" - Do Background Checks To Be Sure

Imagine the nightmare of waking up in the morning to see on the local news that your company had an employee who committed a workplace shooting or who was arrested for operating a drug ring at your workplace. 

People won't likely remember the name of the employee, but the name of your company will burn in their minds. 

"What did I miss?" you ask yourself.  "He didn't strike me as the type to do something like that.  I didn't see that one coming..."  Listen, it doesn't do any good to beat yourself up.  Look at what you can do differently going forward.  Over the past 17 years of HR, I've encountered a good percentage of highly educated, sophisticated and intelligent candidates whose criminal past was alarming.  And one thing I've learned is clearly:  You can't tell by looking at a person whether or not he's not an employment risk. 

When employers are hiring, a critical step, unfortunately, that often gets overlooked, is doing a background check.  Employers who skip this step are invariably opening themselves up to potential liabilities (that can be easily mitigated by digging into someone's past a bit).    Worst of all, companies that hire folks with a criminal past accept the liability of "negligent hiring."  When an incident of workplace violence occurs at the workplace, companies have later been sued for thousands of dollars because of their "negligent hiring" (they failed to check criminal histories and hired someone with a past history of violence).

A simple background check can prevent hiring employees with a history of violence, theft, drug use, fraudulent SS numbers and falsified applications.   Background checks should include criminal history (national, state and county), sex offender registry, verification of SS#.  You can purchase additional checks such as employment verification, education verification, driving record, etc.   

My suggestion:  Spend the money upfront to have a well-respected background check company do the work for you.  Develop a good relationship with the background check company.  They generally charge based on volume, but a basic national criminal should run around $25.00 (for multiple state and county checks, there will probably be some additional costs).  Trust me, it will give you peace of mind knowing what's behind the curtain of someone's past history.  One thing is for certain:  You can't judge a book by its cover.    

Kathleen Lapekas - PHR
Action HR Consulting
For Personal Attention to Personnel Matters...
www.actionhrconsultant.com