An employment background check can do a lot for a business. It is one the first lines of defense that businesses use to ensure that they make the right hiring choices.

Research shows that more than 50 per cent of candidates applying for a position lie about some fact on their resume. While some of these lies are innocuous and are essentially embellishments of talents, others could be more serious lies that could hurt the employer.

An employee background check is a process by which employers take the opportunity to verify the information on the candidate's resume. This includes verifying the person's age, educational degree and social security number. Bu utilizing the background check, the employer may be able to establish if a candidate missed a detail by omission or by intention.

Most large corporate organizations as well as small businesses are also including drug testing as part of the employment verification that prospective candidates need to go through.

Pre employment screening has become very important to most organizations in the wake of lawsuits against employers. Recent research indicates that employers paid at least $ 3 million last year in wage compensation claims and more than $ 60,000 in worker violence compensation claims.

Most large corporate organizations tend to outsource their employment background checks to screening services. There are a large number of such services and most of them offer a range of screening services including social security number trace, county criminal records trace, statewide criminal records trace, credit reports, education confirmation, prior employment confirmation and drug testing.

With the availability of an immense amount of information online, employee background checks have become easier and faster. Most employments screening services will have reports on the background screening with 48 to 72 hours. The costs of these screening services differ and depend upon the number of traces required.

While seeking the help of an employment screening service, the corporate organization needs to ensure that the screening service works within the regulations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

In addition, employers need to seek permission from prospective employees before they begin any pre employment screening. Unlike five decades ago, written permission is required by the candidate providing the employer with the authorization to conduct these employment background checks.

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