Why a Criminal Background Check is So Important When Hiring Staff

Hiring staff is not without its challenges, you must trawl through piles of resumes and application forms, carry out lengthy interviews which can take time and resource from the business, and then of course ensure that you make the best selection as to who will be your new member of staff. A key aspect of recruitment which you must never forget is to carry out a background check on your applicants. A background check will give you details such as educational and job history, driving license details and most importantly is a criminal background check. Failure to have a criminal background check carried out can cause all manner of problems for you and here is why it is so important when you are recruiting new staff.

Your Call

There is nothing at all to say that ex-convicts and criminals should be denied the right to work, this is of course not the case and the decision will be entirely yours as the owner of the business or the head of recruitment. What is important however is that you know what you are walking into and that is why anyone with such a history should have declared it on their resume or application form where it explicitly asks. If the background check uncovers a criminal history and they haven’t declared it, their lack of integrity will be why they don’t get a job, rather than their history. Hiring software can really help out in this case as you can keep everything about new hires in one place. It will ensure you didn’t lose a background check on a new hire.

Violence

One of the most common offenses which people repeat are those who have a violent past and this is yet another reason why it is so important that you carry out a background check. Imagine this scenario, you hire someone with a history of violent crime which you know nothing about because you failed the background check. If that person happens to be involved in an altercation which results in violence, the blame will be shared by you because of your failure to carry out a simple check which could have prevented it all.

Driving Crime

There have been some situations in the past whereby managers have actually been sent to prison, having been charged with something called corporate manslaughter. For example let’s assume you hire someone for a driving position without carrying out a background check, and they in fact do have driving convictions. Now let’s assume that this person is involved in an accident because of reckless driving and someone is killed in the accident. Your member of staff will of course be charged with reckless driving resulting in death and you also can be charged with corporate manslaughter for hiring someone who had previous convictions without checking. This is of course a very extra example but the fact that it is even a possibility should be enough to convince you to carry out criminal background checks on anyone who you want to come and work for your company.

Perform due diligence and save yourself the potential consequences that ignoring a background check can have.