Background Checking of Job Candidates
Posted byWhen you need to decide on some prospective candidates who have applied for renting a house or apartment, or who are candidates for one or more job openings in your company, you very rarely will be asked to do a physical screening or interview a candidate who you know of who has been referred by a friend. In effect, each and every person is a complete unknown to you and you have no preconceptions about their history or background. You only have what they submitted as evidence to go on. From the first moment that you meet each candidate, you will begin to form an impression as to whether they are good or bad, trustworthy or not. It is probably not fair to do this but it is part of human nature.
The system of justice that is practiced in this nation operates on the basis of presumed innocence until most assuredly proven guilty. This was designed in this way to disallow the possibility that innocent individuals will be prosecuted and punished for a crime that they did not commit. Human resource managers who screen candidates are not judging a crime case but instead are trying to eliminate candidates that are less desirable than others are, and do some prejudgments often are made based on feelings or hunches. An ethical question is raised in this case, that personal feeling should not be the bases for accepting or rejecting a candidate. Something more objective should be applied as criteria. One such criterion to help eliminate potential problem candidates is to obtain a Criminal Background Check on the candidates in question, or to be fair, on each and every one of them. A Criminal Check is recommended when a candidate is new to your area, having recently moved from elsewhere. The database that is used as the basis for a Criminal Check is national in scope, and any criminal convictions should show up in the report. The cost for running a Criminal Background Check is quite reasonable considering the impact of selecting a criminal as the ideal candidate.