3 Issues You Must Overcome When Performing Employment Screenings

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When you need to hire some new employees for your business and receive hundreds of applications, where do you begin? Hiring the right individuals is the goal of the process, but this is not the easiest thing to do. As you begin this process, you may run into some issues. Here are three common issues you may face and some tips to help you overcome these.

Narrowing Down The Applicants      

If you receive dozens or hundreds of applications for one job, you will need to find a way to narrow down your choices. There is no way you will have time to screen and interview every applicant, so you may want to narrow it down to a certain number of people. This could be any number you choose, such as five or 10.

To do this, you may want to scan through the resumes and read the cover letters and look at each person's credentials. As you do this, you may instantly be able to rule out a lot of the applicants by removing all applications from people that do not have the right education or work history.

Once you have it narrowed down to the people who meet these factors, you may then want to scan through the applications once more to remove any that do not appear professional or excited about the job.

This method is not fool proof, but it can help you get to a reasonable number of applicants to screen and interview.

Reliability Of The Screening Tests

The next issue you may face is finding screening tests that are reliable. If you fail to use reliable tests, your efforts may be useless. The best way to do this is to hire an employment screening company like PeopleFacts. They will be able to explain all the types of screening tools and tests they offer, and you can choose from there.

Running a criminal history report is one you should use for sure, and these reports are extremely accurate. In addition, you may also want to run tests that verify past employers and educational history. You may also want to contact the personal references listed on the applications. This is a great way to gauge a person's work ethics and personality type. The downside to this screening tool is that it can be biased. If the reference is a close friend, you cannot expect him or her to say something bad about the applicant.

Discrimination When Hiring

Finally, as you look for people to hire, you must be extremely cautious to avoid discrimination. The U.S. has laws and standards relating to this issue, and this is what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for. The EEOC monitors this factor in businesses, and it strictly prohibits employers from not hiring or from firing people based on gender, sexual orientation, race, and religion.

If someone applies and feels that you discriminated against them for any of these reasons, you could end up with a lawsuit against your company. To protect your company, you may want to set up standards to use when hiring, and you will need to train your human resource department in these. This can include:

• Basing hiring on a person's credentials, work history, and skills
• Avoiding individuals with criminal records
• Aiming for a diversified atmosphere

There are many standards you can use during the hiring process, and the important thing is staying consistent with these. You should not make exceptions to the guidelines because this could be used later as proof of discrimination.

Hiring an employment screening company is one of the best tools you have to help you find the right employees. If you would like to learn more about this, contact a company that offers employment screening services today.

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8 December 2015