As an HR professional, hiring the right employees is crucial for the success and safety of your organization. Background checks are critical to the hiring process as they provide valuable information about a candidate’s history and potential risks to the organization. But what types of background checks should you expect your provider to facilitate?

A criminal background check is an obvious place to begin. Criminal background checks are essential for organizations that work with people, merchandise, and sensitive data. A criminal record check can help you identify candidates who present risk, but almost even more advantageous is it quickly clears the candidates who don’t.

Moving on, employment verifications ensure that the employment information listed on the applicant’s resume is verified and true. For example, if you happen to be working in the healthcare industry, there are certain credentials and modals of experience that prospective employees absolutely must meet. This is information that should be independently validated.

In many industries, healthcare being another great example, education verification should occur where a candidate who will fill specialized roles (providing treatment to patients for example), to ensure that the candidate, in fact, has the education and training indicated on their application.

Credit checks are now becoming incredibly relevant, especially when a new hire will be working with money or sensitive information/data. There are some roles in the financial industry (bank tellers, financial advisors) where regulators require that an applicant demonstrate financial responsibility, which includes having a clean credit history. When clients and customers are trusting you with their finances and wellbeing, it only makes sense that the person who they’re speaking with have a grasp on their own household.

The use of social media checks in Canada is on the rise because they provide insights into a candidate’s behaviour, beliefs, habits etc. that other types of background checks do not.   By using advanced technology to search public and private social media accounts, it ensures the information gathered is accurate and relevant to the position. You can then make the determination as to whether your candidate is a pass/fail or if other issues were flagged in the process.

Does your team call a candidate’s references 100% of the time? If not, you might want to rethink your approach. Reference checks are relevant because they give you firsthand insight into others experience working with your candidate and provide valuable insights into things such as work ethic, personality, and abilities.  Without a proper reference check, there’s no way to ensure accurate information — or that the reference itself isn’t being forged. It doesn’t have to be overly time-consuming, and it can wind up saving you countless hours and money.

In summary, these are some of the core background checks you should be performing when considering a new hire. It’s very likely that you may need all or, at the very least, some of them. When considering enhancing your hiring process and investigating which background check providers fit your organization best, the most economical choice is to seek out a provider who can provide all your necessary checks in one place and who possesses the accessibility of a secure online service, with an emphasis on speed and efficiency to ensure that your checks are processed expediently. For more information about Triton background checks visit www.tritoncanada.ca.