By McKensie Piepho of National Crime Search
A successful home health care
company prides itself in doing things right the first time. This includes doing
background checks on all new-hires. So how did a well-known agency miss the
fact that they hired someone with felony convictions? They performed the
required state police check. What went wrong?
Unfortunately, this company made
a common background screening mistake. They assumed that a state mandated
background check showed all of the applicant’s criminal records. This is such a
common mistake that we’ve included it in our list of six common mistakes and misconceptions.
1) Individual
states often require certain industries to perform certain types of background
checks, often state police searches. State police searches can be a valuable
part of the background screening process, but an employer should not assume
that the search will show a criminal record from another state. Most of the
time they won’t. It’s best to include a
multi-state database scan as part of your search package. They’re fast,
affordable, and will often uncover information about the applicant that you
would not have discovered otherwise. Follow up county criminal searches can
also be performed for verification.
2) The
second common oversight employers often make is that they fail to verify past employment, education, and
references. Yes, it can be time consuming, but an employer should either
take the time to do this or have a background screening company do the work.
Often, outsourcing these functions can be more effective.
3) Employers’
not knowing their state laws takes third place on our list. Always pay close
attention to your individual state laws. For example, there are currently a
total of eight states that have restricted the use of credit reports for
employment purposes. Additionally, some states are trying to ban the use of
social media information when screening applicants. A few states have laws that
prohibit employers from asking for social media site login credentials.
4) This
one usually occurs right out of the gate – Many employers often don’t realize
they MUST first get a signed
authorization form from the applicant BEFORE running a background check.
It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s required under the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting
Act). Make sure you keep these on file even if you don’t hire the applicant.
Many background screening companies recommend keeping them on file for five
years.
5) The
fifth common mistake occurs at the end of the background screening process.
Many employers fail to provide the
applicant with a pre-adverse and/or an adverse action letter. You might
ask, “What’s that?” This is a letter that notifies an applicant when they might
NOT be hired or WILL NOT be hired because of the results of the background
check. Additionally, it includes a copy of A Summary of Consumer Rights (from
the FCRA), and a copy of their background check results.
6) Our
sixth common misconception about background screening is that there is an
all-encompassing nationwide search. Unfortunately, there is no publicly accessible
central repository for all federal, state and county level felony and
misdemeanor convictions. Even FBI searches have been known to miss important
criminal records that county level searches located.
As you can see, there are many
things to take into consideration when screening new caregivers/employees. The
good news is that there are resources such as Leading Home Care to point you in
the right direction.
For more information, join us for
our
webinar on June 13, 2013 hosted by Leading Home Care.
Travis Fink and McKensie Piepho with National Crime Search will join Stephen
Tweed to discuss these issues and more.
McKensie Piepho
888-527-3282
National Crime Search, Inc.
Your Background Screening Partner