Please Note: The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only. It is not a consumer reporting agency as defined by The Fair Credit Reporting Act and should not be used to determine an individual's eligibility for personal credit or employment, or to assess risk associated with any business transactions such as tenant screening.

Background checks are an important element of any recruitment procedure. Companies want to screen candidates before they assimilate them into the organisations workforce. Failure to do this may lead to dangerous consequences into the future caused by an employee’s criminal act that could have been avoided by prescreening them. A background check involves an inquiry into the candidates past to check whether he or she has a clean past record. They are based on a popular belief that a person’s past can be an accurate predictor of their future. These pre-employment checks involve checking on criminal records, to see if the candidate’s name is among the country’s criminals, and communicating with the candidate’s former employer, who provides information on the candidate’s track record. It may also involve the potential employer checking into the candidate’s financial and commercial past.

The different sources provide different information that help properly assess the candidate. However, the most basic and important source is criminal records, records that provides an individual’s criminal history. The information gathered will be used to tell whether a candidate performed any criminal acts in the past. With the information, the potential employer has a good basis of denying or awarding the job to the candidate. If his or her name appears among those of criminals, chances are he is not a trustworthy person.

Many companies in the past, awarded jobs based on either academic qualifications or through referral by friends and family. This led to the organisation absorbing people without caring about their past. This had serious adverse effects to the organisations. For instance, a company could easily absorb a criminal, who was dismissed by their former employer for stealing from the organisation. Chances are that, this person will steal from the new organisation. Many companies made losses in terms of income ideas stolen by employees and this led to the realization of the need for background checks, which majorly involves checking into the criminal records.

These records have varying information between countries and between jurisdictions in a country. Different laws in different countries bring about the differences. A crime in one country may not be a crime in another.
Although they are the most important sources of information, criminal records search is not the only source of information important in carrying out background checks. There are others sources depending on the type of information required.