It’s unfortunate, but it’s true – applicants lie. Perhaps they never mean to, perhaps it was just an oversight. Other times, it could in fact be that they did not think the information they ‘forgot’ to disclose had such a bearing on their winning the job. The only way you can know for sure is to carry out a background check that follows their histories and strengthens or weakens their assertions.
Instead of an out and out background check, you could induct some kind of integrity check into your test and interview questions. Questions that force the candidate to reveal their true nature as they answer them; and of course, questions that have relevance to the field and job at hand. This saves you the extra trouble and expense of the all-out investigation.
After you have read up all the facts and dug up all the history you can about a person while checking on their background, you should yet make one final stop. Old men and women of the neighborhood in which your job hopeful grew up will always have some discerning stories to tell that could shed a new light on things. Speaking to them you might be able to learn things about this person that you would not find anywhere else.
There is simply no way to measure how many deaths have occurred due to accidents, train wrecks, boat capsizes, and plane crashes. Many of these occurred at the hands of under qualified drivers or pilots who never should have gotten employed in the first place. But due to obviously falsified credentials and/or lapse diligence on the parts of the employers – a simple but good background check would have exposed them – they got the jobs anyway.
Employers are venturing into a process of investigation called background check because of the records of fraudulent practices the past. They go beyond viewing applicants’ credentials, to searching if the credentials presented are genuine. Most companies hire service providers.
The increasing rate of impersonification in recent times calls for background check in every area of life, be it in schools, hospitals, companies and at home. People are no longer to be trusted because they claim to be who they are not for selfish reasons. People impersonate as doctors, teachers or accountants while in the real sense they are not.
There are agencies that conduct background check on people’s database. Some of the databases are state security number, sex offenders, register and state eviction records. The reason for this form of investigation is to know the criminal history of the people they are investigating.
Once you have a criminal record, you might never be able to go straight again. Besides the fact that you are now labeled by most as a criminal, employers conducting background checks might find this out and decide you are not the person fit for their business. Such frustration could lead you down a darker path than the one you are just climbing out of. You would need to be careful to put your best foot forward, or better still, do Not ever commit a crime.
