Tougher Background Checks Come with the Recession

The recession has brought on one increase other than in foreclosures.  Background checks.   More employers are not only conducting background checks, but they are adding searches to their preemployment screening program.

With the economy being in a tailspin, more employers have requested financial background searches on their employment candidates.   With the increased job pool of skilled workers, employers seek to reduce their risk in employee theft of malfeasance.   Checking out a job candidate’s credit report or at the very least his record for Bankruptcies, Liens, and Judgments, can help discern financial desperation on a personal level.  Such desperation can often cause employees to do things they normally wouldn’t, be it embezzlement or by stealing sensitive data or proprietary information.

Additionally, employment candidates in dire financial straits, may have had credit accounts put into collections.  Collections can lead to annoying phone calls and possible wage garnishment.   Wage garnishment is one extra responsibility that will cost an employer in time and money.

More employers are requesting drug tests.   Testing job candidates for drugs helps alleviate accidents in the workplace that can cause injury and loss of life, and allt he incumbent liability issues.   There is also the hard issue of recruiting and retraining to replace those employees who couldn’t function due to substance abuse.   And substance abuse always seems more prevalent in harsher economic times.

Employment standards are higher.  Employers are more demanding in the job skills and potential they ask of their new recruits.   With the economy in a downturn, employers realize they need the best out there and the few extra dollars they pay for education verification, and employment verification, as well as reference verifications, will go a long way in determining the right fit for the position.    In essence, employers have raised the bar, a sing of a shoppers market in the labor pool.

All told, the economy has cause a tightening in the job market but an increase in the number of background searches per job candidate.  Clearly, the recession has caused more employers to check them out before they hire.