Do you normally make impulse decisions that could cost your business thousands of dollars, or do you look at all of the available data to ensure you make an informed decision? If you don’t like taking risks with the future of your business, why would you take a chance on hiring someone without first running background checks to review their past. Not many people would expect the well dressed and well-spoken interviewee to be a thief, but sometimes that’s just how things turn out.
In a perfect world, job candidates would walk in and give you an honest and full disclosure of their past. This is not even close to reality. There are not many people out there that are going to tell you something that could potentially hinder their chances of getting the job. They are secretly hoping that you don’t have a pre-employment screening process in place.
No matter what size your company is, you don’t want to judge a book by its cover when hiring your employees. It’s sometimes easy to be fooled by appearances. In some cases, it is the person who you would least suspect that will wind up robbing you blind. Whether you have five employees or 5,000 working for you, it’s never a good idea to trust only in your instincts when hiring your staff. A good background check is the best way to assure that you don’t hire criminals to represent your business.
You may not realize it, but some people seek jobs specifically to steal from their future employer. They will not only have the chance to lighten your wallet by stealing from you, but you will be paying them to do it. Some of them work by themselves, and others are a part of a much larger network. I have worked cases in the past in which the employee was just a small piece of the puzzle in regard to the role they played in their group. For example, I worked on an employee theft investigation that involved a single cashier that was not only taking cash from the register, but was having their friends come in and fill out fraudulent credit applications using false identities as well. It was later shown that she was also accepting counterfeit cash.
Some small business owners may think that this kind of activity would only happen at a massive store, which is not the case. Once these groups have a single person on the inside, the possibilities of what damage they can cause to a business are endless. We were lucky in this situation, because were able to work with multiple branches of law enforcement to identify others involved and close the case. Not every case has a good outcome though, sometimes they are gone before you even realize anything is happening.
While not all cases are that large in scope, for a small business a large loss could be crippling. I’m not trying to give you nightmares. I am trying to arm you with information that could help save you a lot of time and money by doing it right in the first place.
You can’t just assume that everyone you want to hire will be a good decision. Take the guesswork out of the process and run thorough background checks by using a reputable company that is known for pre-employment screening. These steps are necessary to avoid all of the headaches you could face if you don’t get them done for everyone you hire. Skipping the process is gambling with the success of your business, and the small costs involved are a tiny fraction of what you may wind up losing in the long run.
For more information contact us: Background Checks or call 1.770.426.0547