How to Conduct Background Checks: A Guide for Employers
When you’re holding a resume, how can you be sure you’re looking at the whole story? A thorough, compliant background check is far more than a formality—it's a fundamental strategy for protecting your people, your culture, and your assets.
A single bad hire can expose your company to significant risks, from financial loss to workplace violence. In fact, research shows that 95% of employers use background checks to protect their employees, customers, and business. A structured screening process is your first and best line of defense.
Protect Your People, Culture, and Assets
A great company culture is built on trust. When you verify a candidate's history, you reinforce that trust from day one. It’s no surprise that 57% of employers report a "better quality of hire" as the top benefit of screening. This diligence ensures new team members have the skills they claim and align with your company’s values, safeguarding your workplace environment.
This process is also about tangible security. Consider the access a new employee might have to sensitive data, financial accounts, or physical property. Properly screening candidates helps you mitigate major risks like:
- Hiring Fraud: 85% of employers have caught candidates lying on their resumes. Verification prevents this.
- Workplace Misconduct: Identifying past behaviors helps protect your colleagues and customers from potential harm.
- Financial Theft: Flagging individuals with relevant criminal convictions safeguards company assets.
A well-run background check program isn't about disqualifying people. It's about confirming you're hiring qualified individuals for the right roles, creating a safer, more productive workplace for everyone.
Stay Compliant and Secure
Beyond asset protection, a formal screening process is crucial for legal compliance, especially in regulated industries like finance or healthcare. Applying a consistent policy helps you avoid costly fines and discrimination lawsuits.
Integrating screening into your overall security protocols strengthens your defenses. Many businesses realize the benefits of a visitor management system to create a secure lobby, but that protection truly begins with the people you hire. A secure onboarding experience starts with a reliable background check.
The market reflects this growing priority. The global background check industry was valued at USD 15.54 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit USD 39.60 billion by 2032. This growth shows just how seriously modern businesses are taking screening to build safer, more trustworthy teams.
Laying Down the Law: Your Legal Framework for Screening
Before running a background check, you must establish a clear legal framework. This is about building a fair, consistent, and defensible process that shields your business from legal risks. A vague, "figure it out as we go" approach is a direct path to compliance nightmares.
A surprising 87% of employers find something questionable on a background check. The real test is how you handle that information, which is governed by a complex web of laws. Your best defense is a crystal-clear, written background check policy that serves as the foundation of your entire screening program.
Why You Absolutely Need a Written Policy
A formal policy is non-negotiable. It ensures everyone in your hiring process applies the same rules consistently to every candidate, removing guesswork and personal bias. This is critical for both fairness and legal protection.
At a minimum, your policy must define:
- Which roles require checks: Specify the positions that need screening and why, based on job responsibilities.
- What you'll check for each role: Detail the exact types of checks—criminal, employment, education—for different job levels.
- How you'll evaluate the results: Establish clear, objective guidelines for assessing information, especially criminal records, in relation to the specific duties of the job.
Documenting this process is invaluable. Without it, you risk making inconsistent decisions that can easily be challenged as discriminatory. To understand the full scope of the process, a guide on What Is Pre-Employment Screening: A Guide for Employers is an excellent starting point.
Getting Proper Candidate Consent
Obtaining proper consent is perhaps the most critical step. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you must inform the candidate in writing that a background check may influence your hiring decision. This notice must be a standalone document, not buried in other paperwork. Only after providing this can you get their written permission to proceed.
Don't overlook this. Failing to get clear, explicit consent before running a check is a major legal misstep that can lead to hefty fines and lawsuits. The FCRA is incredibly strict, and courts have little patience for employers who cut corners.
Imagine this common scenario: An HR coordinator, rushing to fill a role, hands a candidate a stack of onboarding papers. Buried in the fine print is the background check disclosure. This is a classic FCRA violation. If that check reveals negative information and the candidate isn't hired, your company is exposed to a lawsuit for improper procedure.
This is where integrating your screening into a secure system provides immense benefits. By automating the workflow, you can ensure every candidate receives the proper disclosures and provides digital consent before any screening begins, creating a perfect audit trail. This builds a solid legal shield that protects your business from unnecessary risk and maintains high standards for compliance in the workplace. A secure and compliant entry process, for visitors or new hires, starts with a system that puts these legal safeguards first.
Choosing the Right Checks for Each Role
Using the same background check for every new hire is inefficient, costly, and can create legal risks. A smarter, more defensible approach is to tailor your screening process to the actual responsibilities of the job.
Think of it as a tiered screening policy. A cashier handling money presents a different risk profile than a software developer with no access to financial accounts. The key is to analyze each role's duties to determine which checks are genuinely relevant.
Aligning Checks with Job Responsibilities
Start by grouping roles based on their access and responsibility. Will the person work with vulnerable populations? Will they handle sensitive customer data or have access to bank accounts? The answers dictate the depth of the screening required.
For instance, a role with financial oversight demands a credit history report and a criminal check focused on financial crimes. For a delivery driver, a motor vehicle records check is non-negotiable. This targeted method ensures the information you collect is directly related to the job's functions, a cornerstone of fair hiring.
The purpose of a background check isn't to disqualify someone. It's to verify that a candidate's history aligns with the level of trust and responsibility the job demands. This is how you protect your business, employees, and customers.
The process often starts with foundational steps like identity verification before moving to role-specific checks.
While this provides a high-level overview, the real value comes from customizing the checks—especially the criminal and reference stages—to fit the specific role.
The Most Common Verifications
Even with a tiered policy, most background checks share a few fundamental components. Understanding what each one reveals is key to using them effectively.
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Criminal Record Checks: The backbone of most screening, this searches for felony and misdemeanor convictions across county, state, and federal databases. It's essential for roles involving security, safety, or access to assets.
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Employment Verification: This confirms a candidate's work history, including job titles and dates of employment. It's a simple and highly effective way to catch resume fraud.
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Education Verification: This check confirms that a candidate’s degrees, diplomas, and certifications are legitimate—critical for any job where a specific educational qualification is a requirement.
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Reference Checks: These offer insights into a candidate's real-world performance, work ethic, and skills. While other checks verify facts, references provide crucial human context.
These four checks provide a solid baseline, but today, speed and regulatory compliance are top priorities. Recent industry research shows speed is now more critical to employers than risk or cost. This shift is driven by automation that delivers faster results, helping companies secure top talent in a competitive market without sacrificing compliance.
If you’re onboarding contractors, following specific contractor management best practices ensures your screening is appropriate for non-employees who still need access to your worksite.
For valuable insights from past employers, it's worth reviewing essential reference check questions. Ultimately, a balanced strategy combining automated checks with human insights gives you a complete picture of your candidate, allowing you to build a competent and trustworthy team.
Handling Criminal Record Checks Responsibly
Criminal record checks are the most sensitive part of the screening process. Success means balancing due diligence with fair treatment. The goal isn't to find reasons to disqualify candidates but to make informed, relevant, and legally sound hiring decisions.
First, understand that there is no single, all-encompassing criminal database. Information is scattered across countless jurisdictions, each with its own rules for access and detail.
Understanding Data Sources
A thorough check must pull from multiple sources. Relying on one database leaves massive gaps that could miss critical information or surface inaccurate records.
Here are the most common sources:
- County Court Records: These are the most accurate and up-to-date records, coming directly from the courthouse where a crime was adjudicated.
- Statewide Repositories: These central databases are convenient but can lag behind county records or be incomplete.
- National Criminal Database: This multi-jurisdictional search casts a wide net but is only a starting point. Any hits must be cross-referenced with the primary source (the county court) before you can legally act on the information.
The process is growing more complex, especially with global hiring. By 2025, identity verification has become a top hiring risk due to evolving laws and new technologies like deepfakes, posing a significant concern for remote roles with access to critical systems.
The EEOC and Fair Chance Hiring
The most important rule: a criminal record is not an automatic disqualification. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) provides clear guidance to prevent discrimination, which requires an individualized assessment.
You must consider the nature of the offense, its relevance to the job's responsibilities, and the time that has passed since the conviction. This "nature-time-nature" test is the foundation of a fair and compliant screening process.
This framework is also central to "ban the box" and fair-chance hiring laws active in many states. These laws prevent you from asking about criminal history on the initial application, ensuring candidates are judged on their qualifications first.
Applying the Individualized Assessment
Let's apply this to a real-world example. Imagine you’re hiring a cashier and an IT specialist. A background check reveals a five-year-old misdemeanor for petty theft for both candidates.
- For the Cashier Role: This conviction is highly relevant. The job involves handling cash daily, making the crime directly related to the role's core duties.
- For the IT Specialist Role: The connection is weak. This person will manage systems and code, with no access to company funds. The conviction has almost no bearing on their ability to perform the job safely.
Denying the IT candidate based on that old, irrelevant offense could be discriminatory. However, passing on the cashier candidate would be a more defensible business decision. That is the individualized assessment in action.
A modern visitor management system brings this responsible approach to your entire workplace. By integrating credential verification, you can build a secure environment where access is granted based on verified, relevant information for everyone on-site. This reinforces safety from the front desk to the server room.
Reviewing Background Check Results and Taking Action
The background check report is in. How you handle the findings is just as critical as running the check itself. This is where your due diligence translates into a fair, compliant hiring decision.
First, compare the report to the candidate’s application and your hiring policy. Minor discrepancies, like a slightly off employment date, are often simple mistakes. But significant issues—like an unverified degree or a relevant criminal record—require a careful, structured approach.
What to Do with Discrepancies and Adverse Information
When you find information that could lead to withdrawing a job offer, the law requires a specific, multi-step process. This gives the candidate a chance to review the information and correct any errors.
Before making a final decision, you must perform an individualized assessment. You cannot have a blanket rule like, "We never hire anyone with X on their record." That is a fast track to a lawsuit. Instead, you must evaluate the specifics of the situation in relation to the job they're applying for.
For instance, a past conviction for financial fraud is a major red flag for an accounting role but likely has no bearing on a warehouse position. Context is everything.
The core question is: is this information directly relevant to the candidate's ability to perform this specific job safely and effectively? Consistent application of this principle is your best defense against legal challenges.
The Pre-Adverse and Adverse Action Process
If, after your assessment, you are leaning toward not hiring the candidate, you must initiate the formal process required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
The Pre-Adverse Action Notice
First, send the candidate a pre-adverse action notice. This must include:
- A complete copy of the background check report you used.
- A copy of "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act."
This critical step gives the candidate a chance to spot and dispute errors. Mistakes happen—a typo could link a criminal record to the wrong person. This notice is their opportunity to correct the record.
Give Them Time to Respond
After sending the pre-adverse action notice, you must wait a "reasonable" amount of time before making a final decision. The industry standard is at least five business days. This provides a fair window for the candidate to contact the screening company and dispute any inaccuracies.
The Final Adverse Action Notice
If the candidate doesn’t respond or the information is confirmed and you decide not to hire them, you must send a final adverse action notice. This letter officially informs them of your decision and must include:
- The name and contact information of the screening company.
- A statement that the screening company did not make the hiring decision.
- A reminder of their right to dispute the report and get another free copy within 60 days.
Why Following This Process Is a Win-Win
Meticulously following these steps does more than keep you legally compliant. It reinforces your reputation as a fair and transparent employer. By giving candidates a voice, you acknowledge that reports aren't perfect and that context matters.
Ultimately, a well-managed review process helps you make informed and defensible hiring decisions. This same principle of fairness and security can be applied to managing everyone who enters your building. Modern visitor management systems automate workflows for everyone—from interview candidates to new hires—ensuring all security and compliance steps are followed every time. This systematic approach reduces human error and demonstrates your commitment to a safe and fair workplace from the very first impression.
Common Questions About Background Checks
Even with a well-defined process, questions will arise. Understanding the practical details and legal nuances is key to keeping your screening program fair, consistent, and compliant.
Knowing how to handle common situations—from turnaround times to candidate concerns—empowers your team to make sound hiring decisions and minimize risk.
How Long Does a Typical Employment Background Check Take?
Turnaround times vary, typically from 24 hours to a full week. Simple verifications, like an identity check or national criminal database search, are often nearly instant.
The timeline usually extends when manual work is needed, such as contacting previous employers, universities, or county courthouses. A realistic expectation for a comprehensive screen covering criminal, employment, and education history is about 3 to 5 business days.
Common causes for delays include:
- Slow responses from past employers or schools.
- Staffing shortages or procedural delays at courthouses.
- Incomplete or inaccurate information provided by the candidate.
What Should We Do if a Candidate Refuses to Consent?
If a candidate refuses to consent to a background check, you cannot legally proceed with it. This is why it's a best practice to state that a successful background check is a condition of employment from the beginning.
If this happens, first clarify the process with the candidate, as their refusal may stem from a misunderstanding. If they still decline, you have the right to withdraw their offer or cease consideration of their application.
The key is consistency. Your policy must be applied the same way for every candidate in a similar role to avoid discrimination claims. Always document the refusal and your consistent company policy for legal protection.
Can We Conduct Background Checks on Current Employees?
Yes, but it requires transparency and care. This typically occurs when an employee is being promoted to a role with greater responsibility, such as a position in finance or one working with vulnerable populations.
You need a legally valid reason for the check and are almost always required to get the employee's new written consent before running another screen. Consent is not a one-time event; it must be obtained for each new check.
A transparent policy is crucial for maintaining morale and should clearly outline:
- When you perform these checks (e.g., for specific promotions).
- Why the checks are necessary for those roles.
- How you'll evaluate the results in the context of their current employment.
Integrating screening with your broader security protocols creates a stronger safety net. A modern visitor management system, for example, automates the verification process for everyone entering your building, from visitors to employees undergoing an updated screening. This benefit ensures your access rules are applied consistently across the board, reinforcing security without creating extra administrative work. It’s all about building an environment where trust is established and continuously verified.
At VisitUs, we understand that a secure workplace starts with knowing who is on-site. Our system automates check-ins, verifies credentials, and ensures every person—from a first-time visitor to a long-term employee—adheres to your safety and compliance protocols, creating a safer environment for everyone. Learn how you can automate and secure your workplace at https://visit-us.com.
