Pre-Employment Investigations

Employing the right person for a job is a daunting process. And verifying that the information they provided is truthful just ads to the burden. And what about what they did not tell you?

In pre-employment situations where the personal or professional history of an individual is important, a background investigation can be vital. This is the tool to determine or verify an individual's official record, references and financial stability. And now many states support the 'negligent hiring' doctrine. This means that employers can now be held liable for their employees actions if it is shown that they did not make an effort to carefully screen their employees prior to hiring. Why take the chance? Isn't it worth a few dollars now to avoid potential disaster in the future?

Call for a free consultation on how this service can assist your case.

Aenigma offers a variety of options within its pre-employment background investigation services, including:

• Verification of true identity
• Criminal history
• Civil litigation and judgments
• Driving history (where & when allowed)
• Employment, Education and personal reference verification
• Business interests
• Asset searches
• Credit analysis (with appropriate authorization and documentation)
• and More

Legal & Aenigma Policies

Record Checks: Aenigma performs all of its criminal and civil court checks directly with the court, either through a personal visit from staff/contractors or direct electronic access to the court. No third party databases are used to do the confirmed court checks. This complies with the FCRA and various other state and Federal laws on verification of records and ensures the most accurate and relevant information.

Pre Employment Checks: Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), an employer has a number of detailed requirements with which it must comply both before it can procure a background report (consumer report) about an applicant or employee, and if it intends to take action in whole or in part based on information in a consumer report. See 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681 et seq.

There have been several recent court cases punishing employers for not following these procedures.

Specifically, an employer must:

1. (i) have a permissible purpose for procuring a report in the first place;
2. (ii) certify to the background screening company that it will comply with applicable law and will not use any information in violation of Equal Employment Opportunity laws or regulations;
3. (iii) provide a written disclosure to the applicant or employee indicating that specific background checks will be conducted by a third party and obtain authorization from that applicant or employee to conduct such checks; and
4. (iv) follow the detailed two-step adverse action requirements (including providing a copy of the report, a Summary of Rights, and a pre-adverse action notification letting a person know he or she could dispute inaccuracies in the report).

Aenigma can provide the information needed in order to comply with these requirements. (see below)

Optional Add-ons

The above checks can have the following specific services added on:

• Education Verification (per Degree)
• Employment Verification (per Employer)
• Professional License Verification (per License)
• Pre-employment Credit Report
• Driving Record (dependent on state)
• County Court Criminal Check (per county)
• County Court Civil Check (per county)
• Federal Court Criminal Check (per district)
• Federal Court Civil Check (per district)
• Federal Court Bankruptcy Check (per district)

Forms & Disclosure Handouts

The following forms may be required:

• Pre-Employment Check/Verification Order Form
• General Background Check Request Form
• Applicant Release for Background

The following information and disclosure handouts must be provided to each applicant and user:

• Summary of Rights under FCRA (must be provided to all applicants)
• Notice to Users of Consumer Reports - FCRA (for employers)

Case Study 1

The client, a wealthy family, had hired a nanny to take care of their children, including driving one of the kids to and from school. They had used one of the online "background check" services that advertise a background for about $40, which came back clear. While we were doing other work for them, they asked about background checks and wanted a "test" on someone they already "knew" was ok, their nanny.

We did a check and based on her application and resume, she had lived and worked only in the same county for the last 10 years (where the client lived also). And she was "clear" there. But as routine part of the ID Verification section we saw that she lived about 6 months in a neighboring county. Upon checking that county we saw an assortment of criminal records, including DWI and Prostitution convictions.

The clients were shocked, and when confronted the nanny confirmed the convictions and was fired for lying on her application. What might have happened if they never found out?.

Case Study 2

A business client was regularly using us for their pre-employment checks, but only conducted criminal record checks for their employees. We convinced them to also do civil record checks for their executive hires and any new hires that would be handling money.

A few months after starting this new level of checks, we were performing a routine check of a possible accounting hire. She came back clear on her criminal records, but had almost a dozen lawsuits in the past 6 years. Some of the lawsuits were of her suing her previous employers, and some of them were her previous employers suing her. The lawsuits by the previous employers were for fraud and similar things.

Obviously our client was not going to take a chance with this potential lawsuit.