Background checks in recruitment: employers' current methods

References and Criminal Records Bureau disclosures are foremost among the battery of checks that employers use in recruitment, particularly when filling positions of trust, according to this IRS study of 177 employers’ vetting practices.

On this page:
Employers’ use of background checks
      Positions of trust for which background checks are used
      References, disclosures and many other checking methods are in use
      Social networking sites are not used by many employers to check candidates
      Few employers outsource their checking processes to vetting agencies
      Not all job application problems that are uncovered by employers are serious
The use of references
      References are widely used when checking candidates’ backgrounds
      Almost all employers give background information to help referees
      The value of different reference formats
      Are references becoming less useful in recruitment?
      The legal pitfalls in providing references
      Most employers require two references
      References continue to include referees’ views and opinions
      Few employers receive critical references
      Employers tackle unfavourable references in several ways
      Steps to make references more effective
Disclosures from the CRB and Disclosure Scotland
      The disclosure services
      Deciding on the level of disclosure is generally easy
      Most employers have procedures to follow up disclosure revelations
      Users are happy with quality of CRB services, but not speed and cost
      More than half of employers experience delays in obtaining disclosures
Ways of improving background checks
Our research
Table 1: Employers’ methods of conducting background checks on job candidates
Table 2: Problems that employers have uncovered with candidates’ job applications
Table 3: A general overview of the seriousness of the problems with job applications
Table 4: The issues that are typically covered by references obtained by recruiters
Table 5: The steps usually taken by employers when disclosures contain adverse information about candidates
Additional resources on XpertHR.