What Is Background Check for Employment?

Employers have a responsibility to ensure that their clients, employees and the general public are not put at risk by their actions or those of their employees. This is why many will get in touch with a private investigator when they're in the process of recruiting new workers.

Private investigators are experts when it comes to performing background checks. Although employers can perform these checks by themselves, only a professional such as a private investigator will ensure nothing is left to chance.

This is an investigation performed by a private investigator into current or potential employees. This check looks for specific information that pertains to the ability and suitability of an employee to serve in a particular role in a company or organization. The employers are usually the ones who have the responsibility of hiring the private investigator to do these checks.

A private investigator can be asked to perform a background check for many reasons. These include:

• To verify the academic credentials of an individual
• To follow up with past employers or references to see if there are relevant issues the candidate didn't disclose about their past roles.
• To check whether the potential employee has a criminal record (if a clean criminal record is a requirement for the job).
• To confirm that an employee has the physical fitness needed for a specific job
• If an existing employee is unable to perform a new role that they claimed to have been trained for etc.

Typical records that are looked into include:

• Criminal records
• Health records
• Academic records
• Previous employment records
• Right to work

However, a private investigator can't simply go looking for all the available information in a particular area.

A private investigator may be restricted in terms of how far back they can go when it comes to criminal records. This is because, for sentences of less than 4 years, the record will be considered spent after some time. Health records are also mostly concerned with your current health status.

However, a private investigator can go a lot further back when it comes to academic and employment records. This means that they can reach out to past employers and learning institutions, and there's no limit to what can be discussed pertaining to your performance. Therefore, when it comes to such information, a private investigator can still uncover a lot. These are two areas in which many prospective employees tend to stretch the truth.