Hiring sometimes can be like a box of chocolates; you never know who you’re going to get. You trawl the sea of candidates and strike it rich with a quality candidate, or you can get shot in buttocks with a dud. This is of course the case if you’re not utilizing an employee background check.
My mama always said that good help is hard to find. I never realized how true that statement was until I became a manager of a retail store. It is truly impossible to find someone that cares as much for my business as I do. Finding that person takes a whole lot of work, as I’m sure you are very much aware. What makes it even more difficult is weeding out the bad apples before they even make it into your store. That’s why a pre employment screening is a must for any business.
About 15 years ago my dad opened his own business, a small seafood restaurant. It wasn’t much back then and with a little help from family, it was running very well. Fast forward 15 years later and it’s strange to think about how slow those times really were (and we thought we were busy back then, too!!) I also own a small stake in the business now and we have to rely on a small staff. One of the challenges we faced when we first started hiring folks from the outside was how to properly screen them. We didn’t want to hire criminals and we definitely wanted people that were going to be good for business, not the other way around.
Working full time in the Loss Prevention industry, I knew just how important it was to run an employee background check, prior to hiring anyone. I actually had to convince my dad that people lie. All the time. He prefers to see the good in people. Great characteristic, but bad for business. Every time we’d hire someone, I’d go down to the local police department, pay some outrageous fee and have them run a criminal background check for me. It was a bit time consuming, but we knew we were hiring people that, statistically, were less likely to harm the business. While you won’t prevent all forms of employee theft, a simple pre-employment screening will help to minimize the risk and provide you with some peace of mind knowing you are hiring the right person.
Fast forward a few more years and today, we source our employee background checks to a third party, which saves us a ton of hassle and a few dollars. To this day, we have only had 1 employee steal from us (I’ll save that story for another time). It still amazes my dad when a clean cut candidate comes in and really impresses us, but fails the pre-employment screening. He’ll come around to the dark side eventually and realize there are people out there that want nothing more than to steal from you, but until then, we will continue to use pre employment screenings to verify anyone we bring into our family business; you should too.
For more information about Employee Background Checks, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
