Loyalty or Liability? Employee Background Checks

Employers have a duty to conduct thorough background investigations on prospective employees. An employee can be an enormous asset or a disastrous liability. A background check , composed of several sections; each section designed to recover certain information, is the absolute first step in any potential hire decision. (For the purposes of this week's Bulletin, we will concentrate on law firm support positions - admin., paralegal, in house investigator... As we are sure you ,the legal professional, knows, interviewing for attorney positions require a different set of hiring criteria.) Given the unprecedented rise in identity theft and "credential-borrowing" sweeping our nation, it's just smart to know whether the stranger you are hiring will hurt or help your organization. And, it is also advisable to know if the new employee has a history of filing charges against previous employers and or creating an unsafe or harassing environment at the workplace.

The result of so many contentious lawsuits over the past decade have left human resource managers with an unclear sense of the allowable background questions, verification avenues and approachable privacy issues. For this reason, we've attached a current employment application blank, approved by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ( EEOC.)

(A background check - correctly applied - can also be used to interview potential witnesses and experts during the trial prep phrase. We have those versions of the employment application blank available as well - the Witness Pedigree Questionnaire and Expert Witness Pretrial Survey.)

The areas of questioning for a prospective new-hire that can be covered are:

- basic personal identity (name, address, date of birth, social security number)

- address history (for the past five years)

- employment history (to include employers' names, addresses, phone numbers, positions held, length of employment, salary and reasons for leaving.)

- military background (and the possibility of reactivation to service)

- security history (criminal records, has the employee been bonded in the past....)

- education history (dates of attendance, degrees...)


For your information and use, respectively, we've attached sample background search results and a blank employment application.

Feel absolutely welcome to call and discuss your need for a professional background search - the information we return and its application.

BNI Investigators: Street smart: Net savvy.

I look forward to any comments you may have or and questions I can answer for you. Feel welcome to order free back-volumes (listed below).

Sincerely,

Lina M. Maini
Editor, The Beacon Bulletin
CEO, Beacon Network Investigations, Inc.