My Recruiting Blog

Online background checks is a phrase used to designate several types of investigation on somebody’s history, usually carried out by means of a third party. Some refer to the checking of the criminal record, if any.

Others may simply refer to the reputation and reliability of a possible partner, customer, collaborator or competitor, and to assuring themselves they make the right choices. This type of service has imposed itself for the last few years, as always more and more numerous were the cases when persons or companies had to suffer as somebody had previously lied to them.

On the other hand, the initiators of an online background check should in their turn have a strong legal and ethical motivation to carry it out or to ask somebody else to implement it for them.

In this regard, if you are an employer, a broker, a landlord hiring the services of a household maintenance company for instance or a parent hiring a babysitter to be there for your children when duty calls, you should by all means make sure the person you are going to work with is trustworthy.

There are specialized services providing online background checks and which, in fact, allow the consultation of public databases, or even liaise with real persons who can further investigate the profile of the person or company of interest to you.

If previously one needed to wait several days in order to have somebody’s online background check, nowadays online services can provide you with the information you need in not more than 24 hours. Apart from time, nowadays one also can save money using the online facilities, which are usually very cheep or even absolutely free.

Besides there are systems with user-friendly interfaces and able to provide reports in a logical and understandable format. Pending on the interrogation addressed to the database, the above reports may be all-inclusive, with information stretching from criminal record to education, driving license record or professional history, or on the contrary may be clearly targeted, providing only the precise answer needed.

Yet, there comes the problem of the reliability of the information found on the internet for free during a job search. One can further argue that all type of information, or even any kind of product or service, available for free is not hundred per cent safe.

Charity in the contemporary society is something rather rare and even if genuine is to be regarded with a scrutinizing eye. Although most common online sources for background screening provide free or cheap services, there are also other businesses which charge more for their work.

Their principle is that it is preferable to pay them an acceptable amount in the initial phase and have the future employee checked, instead of hiring him/her without an appropriate screening, invest in the necessary training, and then find out he/she has cheated the company or done any other serious damage. In this latter case you can lose both time and money.

In other words, choose carefully your partner, but also give yourself the time to think who gives you the advice whether to trust or not the concerned person or company.

Labels: online background checks