Employers do background checks on applicants for every position because they want to see the applicant's actual employment history.
While it is true that most applicants will provide an employment history in their resume or CV, the fact of the matter is that very often employers want to dig a little deeper and find out more about the person that they’re hiring.
While some employers will only call the references on the resume or CV to verify the information, others will conduct a background check and look at the employment history.
This is especially true for jobs where employment history can be critical. For example, some companies that deal in highly confidential information may need the applicant's past work history.
That being said in the majority of cases employers simply want to find out whether or not the applicant in question is qualified to perform the job required of them, and knowing what jobs they’ve performed in the past could yield some information in that regard.
A background check can reveal certain questions that may be relevant to the applicant during the interview stage.
Is a complete background check required?
One thing that is worth knowing is that if you just want to know the employment history of someone then sometimes a full background check isn’t really necessary.
A full background check will generally uncover other information, such as where the person is staying, credit history, criminal history, and so forth. Assuming that you’re not interested in all that, you should be able to carry out a narrower search that concentrates solely on a person’s employment history.
While background checks typically use social security numbers for these purposes, a search using a full name and any other details could yield decent results.
If the results don’t match with the CV or resume, then you might want to dig deeper and actually start looking into their references and checking whether or not something is wrong to cause the employment history in the CV and background check to not match up.
As you can see, a background check is a great way to look at your employment history. It's so easy to do that employers are finding it easier and more efficient.
At the end of the day it is up to you whether or not you want to use this facility, but if you’re in a company where the history of your employees matters – it is better to be safe than sorry!
