Background Checks and the Job Search

If you’re on a job search today and haven’t been on one in many years, particularly since before 9/11, you will likely encounter many important changes in the application and hiring process.

Prevalence of Background Checks

One such change is the extent to which employers now use various forms of background checks before hiring.

A 2004 study found that 82% of employers perform background checks, compared with 66% 1996, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Often this involves the use of one of the many companies that specialize in preemployment investigation of job candidates. Outsourcing this part of the hiring process in this manner potentially allows for a deeper investigation, with more expertise and efficiency.

What May Come Out

What are employers looking for when they investigate your background? Many things. Employers have learned that applicants lie — a lot. About everything from reasons for leaving a previous job, to educational credentials and criminal records. So simply verifying all the basic application-and-resume facts is reason enough for an employer to conduct a background check.

Additionally, with concerns about possible workplace violence or terrorism on the rise, and possible liability for negligent hiring if such an incident were to occur, employers are engaging in more thorough criminal record checking.

Background checking is also increasingly including online searches, which may turn up information you consider private and irrelevant to your job search, such as contents of your MySpace or FaceBook profile.

What To Do About It

Be honest, knowing that the truth is likely to come out. Many facts you would prefer a potential employer not know may not preclude your employment if properly and honestly presented. But if the same facts are discovered by the background investigator, and expose lies on your application and/or resume, you will be viewed as a liar, which is much more likely to preclude hiring.

So, one background-checking expert advises, “The absolute best thing you can do . . . is come clean in the interview process.”

As to the Internet “digital dirt,” take a good hard look at your online presence and clean up your act, if necessary. Better yet, don’t post anything anywhere online that makes you seem unprofessional or otherwise raises red flags to a reasonable employer.

Immigration Status

Another aspect of hiring that has been changing concerns immigration status. We’ve had the obligatory I-9 Form for many years now (I think since 1986). But lately enforcement has been tightening somewhat, spurred by many factors, including concerns over terrorism, the political stalemate over immigration reform (pretty much everyone can agree we should enforce existing laws) and some high-profile busts of employers caught using large numbers of illegal immigrants.

If an employer with whom you apply has any clue about the law on this, you will be asked to prove your eligibility for employment in the United States even if your ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and you look and sound as American as apple pie. Please don’t take it the wrong way. The employer is simply complying with the law. Just know what documents you need to present and bring them with you.

If you look and sound foreign, but are legally eligible to work, the same holds true, but be prepared to help an ignorant employer make sense of the papers you present. Get familiar with the various choices of documentation listed in the I-9 Form instructions and point out which you have. The array of choices can be bewildering, especially to an employer used to American-born new hires.

And good luck with your job search!

Hiring new employees? Before you hire that new employee you may want to find out a little bit more about them.
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