These laws are complex, but simply stated require HR to analyze prior conviction histories of applicants before they can proceed with employment but only after the candidate has received an offer of employment.

At the same time, your company is also required to provide a safe and secure workplace for all employees (Federal OSHA and in many states too), and to prevent later claims of negligent hiring if a serious issue occurs.

This is done through obtaining the candidate’s signature on a disclosure and authorization notice. Infortal makes this step extremely easy as the candidate must sign their authorization in order to start or activate the background check. Candidates can e-sign and can even do so from their mobile phones.

Most Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRA’s) have varying degrees of inaccurate background check results. Infortal guarantees the accuracy of all results, not just that the results were reported correctly from the source—this is a misleading statement that you should be aware of. Many repositories of information do not include all records; only those that the repository has available to them.

Read the fine print in the CRA’s contract – it will be stated there. If they cannot obtain information from criminal courts within 24 to 48 hours, they reserve the right to report from an online repository—these often contain significant gaps in their criminal records and in many cases are missing up to 75% of all criminal convictions.

In some cases a person may have been unfairly accused and convicted due to extenuating circumstances, and in some states all traffic-related matters are considered criminal convictions. The Fair Chance Act requires employers to eliminate the question about past criminal history on their job applications.

Infortal is compliant with these regulations. It is important for your company to obtain legal counsel input regarding your company’s internal compliance with all applicable regulations.

Are you fed up with hiring employees only to find out later that the background check you received had errors? Perhaps the candidate had other names that were not checked, or had a false identity, or even had misdemeanor convictions that were not reported to you. In some cases they may have forged their degree but the forgery was not identified; even with multiple background checks completed?

We see these issues on a frequent basis from new clients. The background checks they had received missed important data. We also hear from new clients who have experienced numerous false positives and false negatives. This should never happen when the records are searched correctly. Recently a new company started in the background check industry to help other CRA’s reduce their false positives & false negatives—again these should never happen when the work is done correctly to start with.