How Much Are Background Checks

How Much Should a Reliable Background Check Cost?

By Rob Thomson September 12, 2008

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What is a reasonable budget for a background check? Many companies approach this question from a logical purchasing perspective: Find the cheapest production available that is sufficiently user-friendly. If your employees like information technology and your accountants don't hate it, you lot've done well.

Notwithstanding, in that location are some important considerations that are not then obvious when shopping for the best value. Legal compliance and take chances management can be overlooked in the decision process. If price is the only decision benchmark, sympathize that it costs a little more to get reliable information. Don't put yourself or the company in a position to be 2nd-guessed, particularly by a guess or jury.

Easy Street

To cite the obvious example, it is piece of cake to get online and sign upwardly your company with a screening service to run instant national U.Southward. criminal database checks. The screening service says the database contains millions of criminal records; it says it is running a "national" check; it says that the web site interface is effortless; information technology says that the results flash beyond the screen most instantaneously; and the cost is typically $10 to $xx or less. Many of these companies will fifty-fifty give you lot a "pass/fail" or "carmine calorie-free/green light" notification every bit to whether the company should hire the individual. Why in the world would whatever company consider spending $30, $50, $75 or $100-plus on a groundwork check when a service like this is available?

The answer is risk management. The Off-white Credit Reporting Deed (FCRA) is a federal law designed to ensure that job applicants are treated fairly when employers hire screening companies to dig up data upon which they will base their employment decision. Bargain basement background checks practice not measure out up to FCRA criteria.

What, Me Worry?

If your company is sued for negligent hiring based on an employee's criminal act, the visitor's screening process will come under intense scrutiny to determine if the individual ad a checky past that might take predicted the criminal beliefs. The legal precedent is that if the employer "could have known," then that employer "should have known" nigh that person's propensity for criminal behavior.

A $x instant background check does non provide an organization with reasonable conviction that it volition weed out criminals on a consistent ground. There are hundreds of counties across the state that don't share criminal records with whatsoever national database. Those that do share records are inconsistent about whether or how often they update their databases. There is no audit trail to determine the reliability of information.

In addition, many counties that share criminal records have redacted any personal identifiers (date of birth, Social Security numbers and the similar) from those records because of the prevalence of identity theft. This means that a visitor could invite litigation by disqualifying applicants based on criminal records that matched just a mutual proper noun.

On the Money

To get reliable data requires criminal records must be checked at the county level. To maximize the probability that criminal records volition be institute, each canton of residence, piece of work or school over the past seven years should be checked, including any alias names used past the private. (Courts file criminal records by name; they exercise non have the methodology or the resources to update criminal records every time someone gets married or changes their name.)

A national database tin be useful as a supplement to the county cheque, only checking it doesn't guarantee that additional records volition be found. Any criminal records that are found in a database must be validated by the local prosecuting jurisdiction to ensure that they are accurate and current for FCRA compliance.

Bottom Line: What Should I Spend?

The cost of a seven-yr county criminal check is variable, because it tin can't be predicted how many times each job candidate has moved or how many names they've used until the Social Security number trace is run. Each company'due south average cost is variable too considering demographics of employees vary across companies and industries. A adept rule of thumb is that a comprehensive, reliable background check can be performed in most cases for less than a mean solar day's pay of the position being hired, and in near cases for far less. Investing a little more up front in this important due diligence process can salvage a company from potentially catastrophic consequences down the road.

Rob Thomson is communications manager and senior account executive for Cleveland-based preemployment screening company employeescreenIQ.