Pre-employment screening is of crucial importance for all American companies. The risks to businesses and employers through not screening have become so great that employers should not take the risk of missing a problem when hiring someone.

Employee screening covers a whole range of issues:

·        Criminal record checks;

·        Sex Offenders List check;

·        Resume verification;

·        Substance abuse;

·        Workers Documentation;

·        Protection against liability

As an employer, your primary concern should be to maintain the profitability and health of your business. An essential pre-requisite for this is to have a suitable workforce. Hiring someone with false qualifications, exaggerated experience, a criminal record or a drug abuse problem could end up having a disproportionately large impact on your business. It is much easier and cheaper to catch potential problems before hiring them.

Perhaps the biggest reason to screen potential employees before hiring them is to protect yourself against legal liability should anything go wrong. Picture the scene; you are a restaurant manager and you have hired a new server. One evening you get called to the kitchen as your new server has assaulted a chef, spilling boiling water over him in the process.

A background check reveals that he has prior convictions for theft and assault and has been stealing other employees' tips, resulting in this eventual confrontation. You fire him, and perhaps report him to the police, but the damage has been done. Pre-employment screening would have revealed these facts, and would have prevented you being sued by your chef for damages resulting from negligent hiring, and potentially even being sued by those employees whose tips have been stolen.

While this example may seem exaggerated, the potential to be sued for negligent hiring is very real. The onus is on the employer to gain a reasonable estimate of the fitness of the potential employee for the job. If it is perceived that an employer should have known something that eventually came to light, they can be sued for the resulting damages. Legal fees alone can run into six figures, and the end result for a small company could be bankruptcy.

Pre-employment screening is usually performed by specialist companies for a modest fee, and typically only takes 2-3 days – if the need to hire someone is truly urgent, then the new hire's contract can include a clause that enables them to be instantly dismissed, without explanation or compensation, if their pre-employment screening highlights anything adverse that they did not declare when hired, thus protecting the employer from any potential liability.

Pre-employment screening enables employers to gain an accurate and dependable picture of the fitness of a candidate for a particular role, and should be used alongside reference checks to ensure that only truly suitable employees are hired. Following these simple and cheap guidelines enables employers to be more confident in their employees and to avoid the risk of costly and disruptive litigation.