The Importance of a Pre-employment Screening Program

One of the tactics that hiring personnel do to determine the applicant’s suitability for the position that he or she is applying for is the pre-employment screening. It is usually done before accepting an applicant for a particular post.

The major reason why pre-employment screening is necessary is to verify the qualifications of applicants. However, skills and capacities to do the job are not the only areas of consideration in the probe.

The personality backgrounds of applicants are also usually taken into consideration. In such cases, the legal services of employment law attorneys may be needed, as the “screeners” have to be thorough in the screening.

Meanwhile, here are the key areas in which a pre-screening background works:

• Conducting a pre-screening program encourages applicants to feel at ease during the interview.

• A screening program shows that an employer has made his or her duty of complying with the needed diligence, which provides a great deal of legal protection in the event of a lawsuit.

• It describes and sets limitations of uncertainty in the hiring process. Although impression and instinct during the hiring process are essential, a decision made based on concrete information is way better than any other bases.

• Doing a pre-screening can discourage applicants with their plans of hiding something. A person with a criminal record or a forged resume will simply apply to a company that does not do pre-screening.

Additionally, in the conduct of a pre-employment screening, checking criminal records is a great example, as it helps accomplish safe hiring.

There has been an inference that 10 percent of job applicants have criminal conviction records prior to the hiring process. Without pre-screening programs, statistics shown that companies unwittingly  hire someone with a criminal record.

Such record is commonly uncovered by qualified researchers who visit courthouses where the applicant has resided or worked.