What is a Background Check?

July 20th, 2009 by Mike

A background check is the process in which an individual or company researches a person’s past to look up anything that might, for example, give them pause during the hiring process. Criminal background checks are also required by law (thanks to the Brady Bill of 1993) before a licensed retailer can sell a handgun or other firearm to a potential buyer.

However, not all background checks look for information of a criminal nature. It is common for businesses to do background checks to verify that the information an applicant gives on a job application is not falsified. It’s an employer’s right to do such a check and most take at least a cursory look, either through an agency that runs these checks in accordance with the law, or buy looking up a person’s information via other options.

Common information gathered during a background check might include information like:

Criminal records
Driving records
Drug tests
Financial information (things like credit score, prior bankruptcy)
Litigation records
Military records
Proof of citizenship
Proof of education
Proof of licensing (when a job requires it)
Proof of prior employment

There is controversy, as some people take issue with a company digging deeply into their past and finding information that isn’t relevant to the matter at hand, but that could be taken into consideration (perhaps out of context) during the process anyway and potentially removing that person from consideration for a job, loan or for housing. Lawsuits related to this crop up now and then, so the best advice for an employer who might be running a background check is to practice discretion, don’t look up any information that might not be relevant, and most importantly, run the exact same check on every applicant as to avoid any suspicion of discrimination.

If, for whatever reason, a person needs to run a background check, they have a couple options. Firstly, they could hire a company (usually online) that will do all the legwork for them. These companies usually aggregate data from a variety of publicly available databases and make it available in a readable format for a small fee. One could also do all that research without the assistance of an agency, but of course that may take longer and bring up less data as one might not know of all the pertinent places to get information.