There is a lot of erroneous information floating around today about background checks. They are going from being useful to being a necessity to doing business. How many of you employers out there have employees with access to the personal credit card information, debit card information, private homes, cash, and inventory. If you do, it is only a matter of time before you will have a problem. But how does one or can one protect oneself against this problem. Well, believe it or not a background check is your first legal defense when your employee is stealing your client’s property. The first question an attorney who is suing you will ask is does your company do background checks on its employees. If the answer is yes that shows that the employer showed some due diligence in hiring employees and that’s bad news for any potential case against the employer. If your answer is no, well then you missed a golden opportunity and deterrent to the litigation process.

We just picked up another client the other day that had this problem. One of their employees had access to a private home and guess what? Checks and jewelry were missing. The lawyers are salivating, the accountant is crunching settlement numbers, the homeowner is piling it on, and our client is asking how we can make this problem go away.

NOT ALL BACKGROUND CHECKS ARE THE SAME

Ever surf the net and see those pop-ups that advertise find anything on anyone for $19.99, or nationwide background checks $9.99…well that price varies from ten bucks to thirty. Here is what you’re getting. There are 3113 counties in the United States, of those counties about 30% have their records on line and accessible to these online providers, mind you they may only update these records every six months or so. You are getting a “nationwide” check because it’s checking all the counties that are online on a National basis. The don’t tell you they leave out 2000 other counties that are not part of the system.

There is another system out there called the National Criminal File (NCF). Many entities that do background checks rely on this system. The problem with the NCF is that it relies on information that has to be relayed from Counties to the State Level and from the State Level to the Federal Level this system leaves a lot of holes out there where information can fall through. NCF is made up of primarily corrections records from the prison system. Prison is for felons, jail is for minor petty offenses, wouldn’t you want to know if your potential employee has been convicted of petty theft, or cashing bad checks? Or if you’re potential employee was charged with assault and battery that was pleaded down to disturbing the peace. You will not see those records on that system.

The only true effective background check is to go directly to the counties the person has lived in and check the records there with the county clerk. Even this is not a fail safe method.. One could have committed a crime in a county next to them. But, it’s the best you’re going to get when it comes to a nationwide background check. You can also rest easier that statistics tell us the more chronic offenders simply cannot resist crime and will have records in their own County.

Each County has its own way of providing public information. Some have it readily accessible online. Others require you to physically go down to the court house and pull the records yourself, in lieu of that; a mail in request with a nominal handling fee will do. The third method is telephonically disseminating the information from the requesting agency. Each County has a different way of operating. Response time very, some of the larger counties in California are backed up to a week of backlog.

We have found that employers have two different strategies with background checks, I call one the bare minimum, “I see nothing, I know nothing” (that’s the $9.99 internet deal) that may keep the critters off for a while. The other involves really wanting to know what is in their employee’s character is about and taking the time to make a quality hiring decision. At present we are at or beyond full employment. This county is getting to be known elsewhere as a place with work and it’s also attracting the less then desirable element that simply has a “different culture” then the rest of us. A background check can help weed out those types from your firm. We have been doing background checks for the past seven years. We used to come across problems with people’s backgrounds maybe 10% of the time. In the past two years that figure has increased to around 25% this is not sleepy Kootenai County anymore.

Phillip Thompson is a Vice President and Sr. Investigator for Confidential Investigations. Mr. Thompson has a business degree from Central Washington University and has been involved in investigative work and fraud detection for 8 years. He joined Confidential Investigations in 2002. He can be contacted at 208-762-5767 or email phil@idahoprivateeye.com.