Bad hires happen all of the time. Even extraordinarily bad hires. We don’t always hear about them, because many times they occur in larger companies where they don’t make much of a dent. If you bring in several million in profit a year, a few thousand bucks in theft maybe isn’t worth worrying that much about.
If you’re reading this article, however, the odds are good that your company can’t afford to absorb that type of loss. A few thousand bucks in theft also usually accompanies another few thousand dollars in time spent on recruitment and onboarding, not to mention the setback your organization will suffer for spending months training a bad fit for a position that you will just have to refill shortly. A poor hiring decision that is an annoyance to a larger firm can effectively destroy a smaller business.
Fortunately, there are easy and effective ways to minimize the risk of an outside hire. A thorough and detailed background screening can help you identify potential red flags that will allow you to eliminate a candidate before it’s too late.
A thorough background check can verify your candidate’s identity, verify their work history, and ensure that they do not have a troubling criminal history. If necessary, you can review their driving record, look for warning signs on their credit record, and verify their professional certificates and qualifications. There are a variety of items you can review about a potential new hire, depending on your needs and wishes. However, you need to know how, and most of us don’t.
You don’t have to look very hard to find evidence of a bad hire causing tons of trouble for a company. Often, these problems could have been avoided by enlisting the services of a professional background screening company.
Let’s be honest: you probably don’t have the resources or the knowledge and experience to screen employees on your own. Are you immediately aware of the laws and regulations pertaining to background checks in your state? Even if the answer to this question supports you performing your screenings in-house, is it really worth the expense in staff-hours?
A professional background screening company can perform a much more thorough screening in a considerably shorter amount of time. An NAPBS accredited organization has demonstrated their ability to adhere to strict regulations and their working knowledge of legislation like the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Screening companies that are accredited are subject to audits by a respected governing board. They have the knowledge, the resources, and the relationships at their disposal to delve much deeper on a candidate’s history in a much shorter time than your staff can likely imagine. And, if you consider the cost in staff-hours of an in-house search, particularly when compounded by the potential losses involved in a destructive hire, it is considerably less expensive.
