third party background check
Within employee background checks, “third-party background check” refers to an employer hiring an outside company to perform a background check on a candidate. Most employee background checks are third-party background checks because most employers do not have the resources, time, or know-how to perform these background checks themselves.
Many background checks include information that is part of the public record. Criminal records are not locked away in a repository that only background check companies can access. Instead, most of those records are filed at county courthouses, and anyone can pull them without special permission. Much of this information is also available online.
When they combine these results with social media profiles and other pieces of online information, some employers believe that they can bypass the third party and run their own background checks on prospective hires. However, running a thorough background check is a more involved process than searching on Google or visiting a local county courthouse.
Quality employee background checks often include many individual checks and searches, from criminal history searches in the counties where a candidate has lived to verifications of employment history and education. Tracking down the right contacts, records, or data points for all the checks that an employer might want to conduct on a candidate takes time and work. Hiring a company to conduct third-party background checks can save a hiring manager or HR professional hassle.
Third-party background check companies also bring expertise and resources to the table that the average employer simply does not have. Background check companies have processes, policies, and company infrastructure set up specifically to conduct background checks, which means that they can complete these tasks faster than any amateur internet sleuth. They may also have tools that an employer can’t access— at Blinkx, that includes our US OneSEARCH product, a proprietary background check database spanning more than 650 million criminal records from all over the United States.
Finally, background check companies can provide resources to help employers learn about the legal implications of running background checks and making hiring decisions based on information found through them. An employer may not know everything that there is to know about the Fair Credit Reporting Act, for example, but a third-party background check company will.
When an employer hires a third-party background check company such as Blinkx to run their employee background checks, they are hiring a veteran company that has the experience, experience, and resources to deliver a superior service at an affordable cost.
Rather than trying a “do it yourself” route that could result in inaccurate or incomplete information, lapses in legal compliance, or other problems, contact us and count on our third-party background checks.
