Making The Most Of Free Background Checks

Although the cost of investigation and security has gone down in recent years, it can still amount to quite a bit of money if you run your own medium or large-sized business. Anything that you can do to cut down on these and other unnecessary costs is really going to help to increase your profit margin. Even small or moderate changes can still add up to quite a bit of money in the long run.

This is why free background checks are a great idea for employee screening. A free criminal background check can still give you enough information to know if a potential employee has been indicted for any serious crimes, without making you pay the expense of doing a more in-depth search. Basically, all of this information is public knowledge. Everyone has the right to know of any proceedings against anyone else in any court in the United States. The only difficulty is assembling this information.

Free background checks take advantage of free police search engines made available by many different counties for public use. These searches are not comprehensive, and you are not guaranteed to get 100% results. Nonetheless, they are usually good enough to double check someone who you are already pretty sure about. Usually, your instincts are the most important factor anyway. Once you feel good about someone, a free background check can give you that extra bit of reassurance so that you can go ahead and hire your new worker.

Of course, free background checks aren't enough by themselves. You should also do some of your own investigation. Make sure to get references and contact them. The type of people someone puts on the reference say a lot about the type of person they are. References are also a great way to check potential employees job histories and make sure that they are accurate.

Then again, sometimes free background checks aren't enough. There are times when your suspicions will be sufficiently aroused that you have to make double sure you have the best information. When this happens, you can buy an online criminal background check of anyone – usually for less than 20 dollars. These are made using proprietary databases of information, and are much more comprehensive than the free checks are. They are the most effective step short of hiring a private investigator yourself. I know many people who use them, and I have heard nothing but good things.