Miscellaneous

Background Screening and Investigations - Book Review

By PI Magazine (Tamara Thompson and Rosemarie Mesis)

Background Screening and Investigations: Managing Hiring Risk from the HR and Security Perspectives is a wide-ranging guide to the technology, resources, policies and procedures, and trends in employment screening. A road map for Human Resource decision makers who are screening potential hires and current employees or who are evaluating outside background screening companies, Background Screening and Investigations adds depth to the extensive topics covered, without being overly technical.

The target audience is primarily the employer businesses, not the providers of background check services. Private investigators just getting into the background screening business or those smaller providers who want to brush up on recommended practices and the trends in the industry will also find this a valuable guide. Also, the findings from surveys of the screening practices and objectives of employers is essential for anyone who wants to offer a responsive screening service.

Sandwiched within the essays by over a dozen specialists in the legal, standards setting and metrics, service provider and security/risk analysis arenas are short-hand chapter highlights, and summaries from the differing perspectives of those in human resources and workplace security. There’s a lot here.

Background Screening and Investigations helps employers think through setting screening policies and practices and whether to outsource, as the vast majority do. Niche services and the expected components of a thorough background screening process have expanded with innovations in data collection. This book describes and evaluates the value of various services — those that are standard and others that are not as regularly employed — such as identity verification, drug testing, reference checks, hand-checks of court records and international screening. With the proliferation of resellers of aggregated electronic criminal records the public and employers may be lulled by the myth of a national criminal records database. There is no substitute — in either comprehensiveness or accuracy — for examining the criminal records index at the courthouse.

The legal mandates for employers and background screening agencies are sufficiently complex that you’ll want to peruse this guide for pre and post hire tips.

Review the Table of Contents and first chapter.

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Full post as published by PI buzz on August 03, 2008 (boomark / email).