Pre-Employment Screening

The importance of pre-employment screening

Pre-employment screening and background check are too similar procedures. This involves researching, compiling and documenting criminal, commercial as well as financial records of an individual.

Pre-employment screening is a procedure usually requested by employers before they take in qualified candidates for employment. These are mostly undertaken especially on those candidates seeking positions that require higher security or financial positions. For instance; in schools, hospitals, financial institutions, airports as well as government premises among other sensitive areas.

pre-employment screening

The ideal purpose of pre-employment screening doesn’t necessarily apply in the above-mentioned areas but also to small business. The reason is, regardless of the size of the business you run, the procedure is important if you want to avoid unnecessary lawsuits as well as costly hiring mistakes. In the past, a few phone calls and simple references could act as evidence towards an anticipated candidate. So what is pre-employment screening and what is its purpose towards every American business owner? Well, the procedure refers to the use of psychometric screening or testing as well as background checks in addition to drug testing. All those steps are valuable as they are used to determine the value, background and identity of the perceived candidate. Most HR professional does background checks of their employees and mostly to new hires.

Precautions to be taken during pre-employment screening

Before you even decide on taking background checks, there are certain things you need to consider. This is because the procedure can impact your newly established small business both negatively and positively.  For one, when you embark on the process, you will realize that the process can of course minimize risks into negligence as far as lawsuits are concerned. Mostly, the company and the company owner are held liable by the law for the action of employees, and this is rather dangerous if you didn’t perform a background check. Something very important to your organization no matter how small is to ensure that it comply with the fair credit reporting act as well as the American with disabilities acts. What does this mean?

Fair credit reporting act

Technically, under this act, your business is supposed to have employees sign a disclosure form which gives them rights to perform a background check. Note that the act isn’t restricted towards credit reports but also consumer reports and laws vary from one state to another in the US. Let us look at this concept under the following; there are some state laws that tend to prohibit the use of particular aspects of criminal records.

American with disabilities act

Your business is required to correspond to this act, which describes a disabled person as one who is mentally impaired and thus unable to execute his or her duties in life activities. Have records of the mentioned impairment meaning that he or she has been institutionalized before as well as regarded as having such impairment overtime. Whatever category the individual lies, background check is primary towards substantiating the purpose of that employee in your company as well as their actions to better the nature of the country.

The reason is why background screening count is that employers are not allowed to use medical or disability information to hire employees or rather during the hiring process. Whether the person was or was confined towards such, you are still supposed to consider them as potential candidates. This is according to ADA. Background checks vary from one organization to another but in spite of all that, there are those key factors that are similar to both large organizations and small organizations like the American with disability and fair credit reporting acts.