Background Checks and Candidate Research– Hype or a Reality?
For the last few years we’ve been hearing more and more about celebrities or high-powered executives being publicly cast as liars after being caught lying on a resume. Why did these people do it? Didn’t they know they would get caught? Well, probably hoping they wouldn’t be discovered, and “back then” we didn’t have the internet and other public information at our fingertips.
This leads me to another related topic.… being aware of our actions. For example: a picture of you marching down a main street protesting a political party, or posting a picture of yourself for your friends to see of you chug-a-lugging it at a football game, might seem okay or fun to you, but casts a shadow of doubt to the hiring person. They want to know, are you the candidate for them? I’ve had to tell a few clients to use a different email address because, on a hunch, I did a search on the email address and pulled up 2-3 pages of links to a few different blogs and message boards all containing controversial topics not at all suitable for an employer to read in a potential candidate.
Most checks are for criminal records or education verification, driving records, credential verification, sex offender registry, reference checks, Patriot Act search and credit reports. Some employers use several different kind of checks while most use one kind and look for extremely bad reports.
While it may seem like a scary inconvenience for the employees trying to get a job, they might want to keep in mind that a search on potential employees might just benefit not only the company itself but also the current employees in the long run.
Food for thought…