Archives for February 2016

Improper pre-employment background screening can mean leaving a business vulnerable to a lawsuit or hiring people who are not a fit. With legal and regulatory changes making the pre-employment background screening landscape complicated to navigate, more and more businesses are taking stock of their current practices to ensure that they are in line.

The following are five best practices for businesses to consider when evaluating a pre-employment background screening program:

1. Designate an On-Site Expert

Ideally, there should be one staff member who is the go-to person on conducting pre-employment background screening for potential new hires. This individual should be well versed in current rules and parameters, proactive, and able to stay abreast of changes in the legal landscape so that the company can stay compliant.

2. Enlist Help from Internal Resources

While one person should be the designated go-to pre-employment background screening expert, others in the company should also be drawn upon to enrich and enhance the company policy. Persons from the legal department, the security team, management and department heads should be consulted as well as human resources in order to craft the best protocols possible.

3. Stay Connected

The pre-employment background screening expert as well as the individuals discussed above should do weekly checks to ensure that the company stays in compliance. Current EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) and FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) requirements pertaining to hiring as well as Federal and your current state laws should be strictly adhered to.

4. Make a Decision About Centralizing Oversight

If a business has more than one branch or location, they will have to decide if one screening system will be used comprehensively for the organization or if each separate location will be allowed to manage its own.

5. Use Professional Background Checks

Checking into the past of potential new hires involves a lot of variables, including laws and procedures that must be followed in order to do so legally. The courts and criminal background report system can be difficult to navigate, as can credit reporting agency documents and other financial records. Because of this, outsourcing background checks to a professional is an excellent way to help ensure that this step is completed efficiently, effectively and legally.

Poor or improper pre-employment background screening can leave a business open to hiring errors and costly legal problems. Businesses should strive to enact these five best practices when evaluating or creating a new employment screening program.

Disclaimer: The information on InstantCriminalChecks.com is governed by our Terms of Use and is never intended as legal advice.

Can a job candidate think in an innovative manner? Can they effectively assimilate coaching and feedback? Will they be adaptable to new environments? Will they work well within a team?

An investigation of employer trends in work evaluation shows that today’s biggest companies are looking beyond just technical skills when hiring. Instead of traditional methods, they are using more nuanced selection, interviewing and placement techniques throughout the hiring process.

These employer trends can assist and inspire businesses in other sectors as well.

While personality tests and skills assessments were widely used in the past, they are being replaced by more individualized screening methods, according to observers of employer trends. Companies like Google are now using the following techniques and methods for more effective hiring:

Behavioral Interviewing

Behavioral interviewing aims to determine future behavior and job performance by asking specific but open-ended questions about the candidate’s past. For example, instead of asking, “Are you a team player?” the interviewer might say, “Tell me about a time when you were on a team project and saw things differently from everyone else. How did you express yourself? What was the outcome?”

Cognitive Processing is Key

While the Google company prizes computer coding skills highly, the second most important attribute is effective cognitive processing. The ability to think on your feet and learn and process new information on the fly is valued more highly than intelligence or I.Q. It can be assessed by asking interview questions about how the candidate would handle a new challenge in a high pressure situation, or by giving timed testing requiring quick learning to solve a problem.

Leadership

Good leadership skills and abilities always bode well for a candidate’s future performance. Find out if they have had any leadership positions in the past and ask what they enjoyed most about them. Leadership positions could be management or supervisory roles at work, but the head of a fraternity or the captain of the math club also counts.

Humility and Ownership

Candidates should balance out their skills and leadership abilities with a healthy measure of humility and the ability to own up to mistakes. Ask candidates how they have handled mistakes at work.

Lastly, today’s major companies are well aware of the hazards and pitfalls of negligent hiring, which is why employer trends in worker evaluation point towards more comprehensive employment background check procedures. No matter how large or small the company, background checks offer a way to help safeguard against hiring a worker with a criminal past.

Disclaimer: The information on InstantCriminalChecks.com is governed by our Terms of Use and is never intended as legal advice.