Misconceptions Preventing Small Businesses from utilizing Background Screens for Pre-employment

Experts say that about 80 percent of HR professionals use pre-employment background screening. The background screening market is estimated to be worth between two and three billion dollars. Yet many small businesses are still relying on old-fashioned screening techniques such as asking for and following up with references rather than conducting a professional employment background screen. This approach is unfortunately quite outdated and could be potentially hazardous for a small medium business.

The question is why are so many small businesses not doing pre-employment background screens. Most small businesses are thinking that this will cost them an arm and a leg, and see cost as being a major inhibitor. In reality, however, the notion that expert employment background checks are too costly for small businesses is a misperception. If you are willing to outsource your pre-employment background screening it is actually quite affordable, usually no more than $50 per applicant.

Another misconception small business owners may have is that they don’t have the internal expertise to do background checks. Lack of knowledge surrounding background screening is another reason why many small businesses often fail to run employment background checks. Certainly, there is plenty to learn about screening. It could very well take an in-house employee moths to research how to best run background checks. This is why the outsourcing neatly solves this problem. If you’d rather not pay one of you workers to figure out how to screen applicants, you can simply hire a professional pre-employment background screening company to do it quickly and professionally for you. Many of the experts are such screening companies have spent their entire careers learning the best ways to research candidate’s a backgrounds.

Lastly, many small businesses are asking, “What is the big deal? We've never had a problem with hiring new employees before?” Lack of concern from small businesses is a major factor. Some small business owners see background checks as something that only certain fields must carry out. And indeed, until the last decade or so, health care, law enforcement and education professionals were by and large the only workers that were subjected to employment background screens. Today, however, private companies have plenty of reasons to consistently carry out pre-employment background screens such as hiring dangerous individuals, root our lies on candidate’s applications and avoid any legal snafus. Additionally background screens in the long run can end up cutting costs and actually speed up the hiring process.

As you can see there are many different reasons why a small to medium business owner should arrange extensive employment background checks. Instead of trying to do employee screening internally, the wise small business owner will outsource this specialized work to a third party pre-employment background screening company.