What is Involved in Employment Background Checks?

Why am I subject to a background check? What information are they looking for? How do they obtain it? What will the consequences be for me as an employee? These questions are understandable concerns for a prospective employee, or an employee applying for promotion. Even volunteers may be subject to such checks. In today’s security-conscious society, it is no surprise that prospective employers are playing safe. But it is not merely security questions they are looking into.

For one thing, whatever exaggerations or inflations of the truth you came up with on your application will show up in such a check. Nobody begrudges an employer checking, for example, whether you really have a medical degree when you apply for a job as a doctor. They are merely protecting themselves from costly negligence suits, with their consequent damage to professional image, a phenomenon which is regrettably constantly on the increase. However, certain information, such as your educational record, is private and may not be looked into without your consent.

Jobs involving responsibility for vulnerable members of society, for example the elderly, the very young or the disabled, are especially likely to be subject to employee background checks. The information sought is for the most part obtained from the widely accessed public records of Government bodies and as such is not especially secret. Information about your driving license, for example, your social security number, past employers and criminal record. Your medical record may also be checked for, although in fact your permission should in fact be obtained in order to do this.

Certain information may not be reported, such as bankruptcy ten years on, civil suits, arrests or tax payment defaults after 7 years have elapsed. So who does the actual investigating? Larger companies often outsource this resource to a professional consultancy specialising in background checks. Much information is freely available on Internet – although employers should be wary of unscrupulous companies advertising background checks and operating entirely online, since they may not always comply with the current regulation on privacy.

You do have a right to know when a background check, or “consumer report” as it is known in the trade, is being compiled on you. In fact, your written authorisation must be sought by the employer or prospective employer, on an expressly drafted sheet of paper separate from the application form itself. Government guidelines state that an employee may request a copy of the completed report, if the information relevant on an applicant being turned down, but this varies in practice from state to state.

An employer may be interested in getting a credit report on prospective employees. This may not at face value seem relevant for jobs which do not involve directly handling money, but your credit habits may allow employers to make certain assumptions about you. They may draw wide-ranging conclusions, for example, about your general reliability on the basis of your past credit payments and general creditworthiness. Someone who does not pay their bills, it is reasoned, is not as generally reliable a person as someone who does.

This may seem very unfair, especially as information on creditworthiness is not always reliable. So who carries out such checks? On the whole, it is in the hands of the three main credit reporting agencies, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, who provide an “employment report” – a modified version of your credit payment history. As such factors can adversely affect your employment chances, it is as well to be prepared and make the necessary enquiries about yourself before applying, if you have any reason to suppose a negative result.