| Q. What is the length of the typical pre-employment investigation? |
| A. Although the lengths of our investigations vary, investigations rarely run less than 4 to 7 days for local cases & 7 to 10 days for outstation cases. In every case, it is the location of case, the number of employees involved, and the skill of the investigators that drive the length of the process. |
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| Q. How are the investigators trained and how often are their reports generated? |
| A. Each is taught about the Security Investigation, employment law, and the process of investigation. Those who have not received our formal training either have prior law enforcement experience or have other qualifications that meet our strict standards. During the course of the investigation, the undercover investigator will generate a report every day he or she works. The computer-generated reports are up-loaded to our network daily and immediately provided to the case manager for review. |
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| Q. What is "negligent hiring"? |
| A. In general, negligent hiring occurs when you knew or should have known that an applicant had a past record and you did not check for it. It comes up when an employee, or in some circumstances an ex-employee, harms someone else where it would not have occurred except for the fact that this person was your employee. For example, if your employee has access to people's homes and then burglarizes a customer, it may be negligent hiring if that employee had a criminal record that you could have discovered with a background check. |
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| Q. Who should I share reference information with? |
| A. All reference information should be confidential with information access limited to those within the organization with a need to know (e.g., hiring manager or administrator). |
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| Q. Who should I contact? |
| A. The most common reference sources are current or former supervisors, project colleagues, peers or customers. Use of personal references is less preferred because they probably won’t yield objective information. |
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| Q. How should I contact references? |
| A. The most effective approach is to contact the reference by person or in phone. Writing to the reference contact is usually not effective and typically yields little information or no response. The supervisor or a member of the search team should conduct the reference interview. |
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| Q. What should I consider when planning my questions? |
| A. Based on the determined job competencies, and information obtained during the interview, create a written reference guide to ensure consistent questioning and to target the issues you seek to clarify. Consider the recency of the position and similarity of duties to the vacancy. |
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| Q. Should I have the reference check completed before offering a position? |
| A. Yes. The best practice is to check references before making a job offer. Otherwise, departments should consider making a job offer contingent upon obtaining satisfactory references. |
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| Q. What applicants or employees are most important to check? |
| Those in jobs that involve a high level of trust such as working with children, the elderly, money, driving, and having access to computer date. Management and executive jobs are important to check due to the amount of responsibility involved. Workmen job for history of criminal record & industrial dispute. Finally, checking is useful where there are job related license or educational requirements. You should tailor your searches to the specific requirements of the job. It is best not to be caught by surprise. |
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