When a business has a small number of employees, a bad hire could have a huge impact. If a job applicant commits resume fraud — concealing criminal convictions and past terminations, for example — it could mean trouble ahead.
Increasingly, businesses are performing background checks on employee prospects before extending job offers. However, many small businesses lack the resources to perform them, which frequently require access to the criminal justice system as well as public records.
Licensed investigators can perform routine background checks. Specialized background screening services not only provide this service but also may identify a range of issues omitted on a resume that could affect job performance. Superior screening companies may conduct substance abuse testing, perhaps at their own labs, and develop programs to detect and prevent workplace violence, theft, injuries, and negligent hiring lawsuits.
If you want to conduct your own background screening, you are pretty well limited to checking references. To do so, you simply call the employment and personal reference that the job candidate gave you on your job applicant.
While this level of checking is useful, it is very limited. For example, it does not address the information available through the criminal justice system or public records.