Are you in charge of hiring new employees? Do you know how to do a proper employment screening? Can you do a background check that will eliminate those employees that have some detrimental past activities that could harm your company? Here are some tips for you to use in your background checking.

Make sure you employee application obtains plenty of information to start your background check. Missing information about the applicant will make your checking more difficult. Look over your application form and create one that will help you in your background check.

Your first check is to look into the persons Social Security information. This is the starting point for your employment screening check. This check is done to make sure the Social Security belongs to the individual. It also gives you information on his past addresses and alias identity. Many people hide their own status by using other people’s Social Security.

Now you can start the employment criminal background check. And at the same time you can check the person driving record. These two searches will reveal more about a person’s integrity and honesty.

Once you have compiled a variety of different information, you can match it up with the information you have on the application form. If there is a difference, then ask the applicant to explain this difference. It can be that there is a logical explanation and there was no intention to hide historical information.

Now, you can do a credit check as part of the employment screening. The credit report you get will be for employment decisions and this report will be different from a financial institution looking for credit worthiness. You cannot use a standard credit report for making employment decision.

To do an employment criminal background check you will need the applicant’s birth date. The law does not permit you to ask for a birth date on the initial employment application. What you have to do is to hire the person and make his employment status based on passing the criminal check.

One other item that is really important in your screening is to get past supervisor and co-worker names and phone numbers. By calling these people you can get more information from them about the prospective employee than you can from the Human Resource Department.

Just with the information you get on the application, you can start you employment screening background check. This is why it’s so important to have a good application form. If you use a standard application form, have it checked by an expert human resource person. Start with Social Security Check and end with a Criminal Records check.