How to Conduct a Background Check

Whether for business or personal reasons, background checks are becoming more and more vital in today's business climate. After all, you can't always be sure that the prospective employee or business partner is really who he claims to be or is as honest as he should be. The following steps will aid you in conducting the necessary basic background checks to protect your business.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Positive ID, computer, phone, and sometimes money to pay information providers.

Making The Background Check

1. Obtain a positive identification of the person. Identification includes a full name, birth date, social security number, and past and current addresses. Asking for a driver's license or state ID is one way, but you can also acquire some of the information you need through simple conversation such as finding out birth dates or origins.

2. Confirm the information with an address history search. Red flags include revealed aliases, previous residents with same last names and age, but different first names, or if none of the information given matches with the returned data.

3. Conduct a general records search. The search should include public records, vital records, financial records and property searches, court records, and driver history records.

4. Do a criminal records search of local, county, and state databases. Some of the available criminal records include: municipal criminal records, county criminal records, statewide criminal courts, FBI most wanted, and sex offender records.

Tips & Warnings

• Hiring an information provider to do the checks for you can be a big time-saver; however, the cost, time of response, and quality of the check often vary from company to company.

References

• How to Conduct a Basic Background Check

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