How Do Pre Employment Background Check Companies Work?

If you have applied for a career opportunity it is possible that you know about pre employment screening companies. These companies offer professional services for conducting a background search on potential employees of a company in lieu of a fee. An employer might hire their services for a variety of reasons like confirming the identity and ensuring a clean credit record etc. Fresh graduates sometimes get confused as to how these companies work and what formalities are involved in a background search. Let us find out here.

 

Any pre employment background check company will first have to ask for a written consent from the applicant for running a background search on him. This is mandatory under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) as the candidate must be informed prior to conducting a reference check on him or her. The FCRA applies to such background search companies only and not to those employers who have their own employee screening department in the company.

 

Once the disclosure for running a background check is signed by the job applicant, the pre employment background check companies have to start getting all the details required for conducting a search. These include the complete name, past and present addresses, previous employers, date of birth, social security number etc. If the candidate is a married woman, her maiden name could be asked for. Based on these details, the reference verification service can move ahead with their job.

 

The primary source of information for these companies is the state public records. These companies also access the records maintained by credit bureaus, department of motor vehicles and court records for creating a report. All the background screening companies must be abreast of the various employment background check laws governing each state. This is important as every state has certain different provisions for safeguarding the privacy of applicants.

 

Medical and education records cannot be easily accessed by any company unless they have permission from the patient and student respectively. In case of court records, only those arrests that have led to a conviction carry meaning in a report and can result in rejection of a candidate.

This is the way how pre employment background check companies work towards creating a background report. Job applicants can also run an online background check on them and order a background screening report so that they can experience the actual working of such reference check services.