Background Credit Check

RGB · January 2003

Does anyone have a template or a site I can go to for a form authorizing us to perform a credit check on potential employees before hiring? We have not been hiring for a long time, but are starting to fill some new positions. Our president wants us to start performing credit and criminal background checks on all applicants who are likely to receive an employment offer.

Thanks,

RGB

Margaret Morford · January 2003

Most people use a service to do this for them, like Equifax or Background America. If you're using a service, they will furnish all the forms and usually educate you about what you need to do. If you are not using a service, there are all kinds of sign offs and written follow ups you have to provide because you are now under the Fair Credit Act. There are big penalties for not following the process. You may want to get some legal guidance if you are going to do this yourself.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

CuriousG · February 2003

RGB - Margaret is correct, many employers do use an outside service to perform these checks. My question is are you wanting to get a Credit Report, or are you really looking for a Background Investigative Report? There are two very different things.

If you are speaking of a true Credit Report, I would have to ask "why?" What business necessisty would justify knowing the current balance of a prospective employee's credit accounts, banking connections, and other financial related transactions? That is what you will learn from a Credit Report (Check).

On the other hand a Background Investigative Report can be tailored to provide a wide variety of important job related information. You can verify previous work history, education, volunteer experiences, criminal (felony only) convictions (be sure they are relevant to the job though), driver's license records, and much more. You can perform this investigation yourself, with the proper releases, or you could hire a "consumer reporting agency" (CRA) to do it for you. Most CRA's are Credit Bureau's. To learn the rules Margaret is speaking of under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) check out the Federal Trade Commission's very user friendly website at [url]www.ftc.gov[/url].

If you have not been doing any hiring in a while, I suspect you are not staffed very deeply in the Staffing area. With proper software and agency connections completing an bacground investigative consumer report can be relatively quick. However, if this is going to have to be done by mail, or telephone calls it can be a slow process, adding several days to the lead time to start of new employee. A Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA)can complete the process quickly (within days or even hours in some cases) and saves you the burden of devoting valuable department resources to the process.

I manage HR for a small to medium sized(150 employee) manufacturer. We obtain a background investigative report on all new hires that includes verification of up to 1o years past employment, driving record review (most of our people operate fork lift trucks) and felony conviction records. I use a CRA to do this for me, and a long lead time would be three days. Hope this helps.

Background Credit Check

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