What do HR managers look for when hiring a new employee? Competence is and should be, their top priority. You need to attract the best professionals available to fill in open positions, otherwise, the big boss won’t be very happy with your work. However, HR managers should not focus solely on professional criteria.
You also need to assess the personality of the new employee and make sure they won’t become a liability over the next few months, otherwise the boss won’t be satisfied, and it will be your fault.
What types of pre-employment screening can you use to make sure the new employee fits perfectly into the organisation and is not a danger in any way?
Should background checks be made mandatory?
Even if police checks are not mandatory in your line of business as they are in many Australian economic sectors, you should seriously consider implementing a strict policy of criminal history checks for all new employees.
Background checks are essential as this is the only way to learn about a job applicant’s past. You can ask them during the interview whether they’ve ever been in trouble with the law, but what are the chances that they’ll answer truthfully? If they know they can get away with it, they certainly won’t tell you if they were convicted of some offence. Why would they?
You can clear all the doubts by using routine criminal record checks on all staff members, so there won’t be any prospective accusations of targeting a specific race, nationality, or group of people.
“If you want to work for us, you’ll have to submit to a police check”. Well, you don’t need to put it exactly like that. You can explain why such checks are important. Say you’re looking to hire a driver for your delivery service. Any candidate will understand you want to see their criminal record to make sure they were never convicted for traffic-related offences. Or, if you’re hiring a new accountant, it stands to reason that you don’t want a career fraudster in charge of your financial affairs.
The list can go on and on. The idea is that there are many types of offences that would make a candidate ineligible for a certain position.
What is the easiest way to get a background check?
The last thing you want as a recruiting agent is more paperwork, more bureaucracy. If you want to make the background checks nice and easy, all you must do is contact an online character check agency. No need to send the candidate to the police department, forget about that. You can order online and get the result via email. Not one piece of paper to deal with!
What other checks should an employer use?
While you wait for the background check, you can also have a look at the job applicant’s social media accounts. Just one look at someone’ s profile can reveal plenty of information about their personality, their views, and their true hobbies, not the random pastimes people put on their CV just because it looks good.
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