Employee Background Check vs Criminal Record Check: What's the Difference?

Looking at any successful company will reveal how employees play a pivotal in a company’s success. Regardless of the business’s nature or scale, hiring competent personnel is critical. It can significantly boost your proceedings, resulting in an inevitable market surge.

Since the practice is crucial, companies need to be thorough with their approach. Hiring an incompetent employee can hurt your business, but undertaking criminal or shady personnel can incur even greater damage. That is why every business worth its salt invests ample time and resources in running a background check.

Background checks are a norm in the modern market, but their diverse use also leads to confusion. What is an employee background check, and how is it different from a criminal record check? Such questions are common for any business to ask.

While both terms are used interchangeably, their scope differentiates vastly. One is conducted to render general information regarding the employee, while the other generates specialised data based on criminal activities.

How are they different, and why should they be used? Let’s take a better look.

Criminal Background Check vs Employee Background Check

In most cases, standard background checks include criminal activities-related information as well. However, criminal background checks offer specialised data solely surrounding the candidate’s criminal history.

What is an Employee Record Check?

Employers undertake pre-hiring record checks to gain critical insights regarding the aspirants. The information assures that the candidate showcases the skills highlighted in their resumes to prevent the chances of routine losses due to subpar performance.

Standard or employee record checks can vary based on the company’s requirements. It can be related to employment verification, driving history, social media screening, and even a criminal record check. So, it can be stated that criminal background checks are a part of employee background checks.

An employee record check can be defined as the summary of all the surface-level knowledge of the candidate’s history. It comprises different fields but only proposes basic data necessary for the job. However, that does not mean employers cannot expand their search in specific fields.

An appropriate example will be running an MVR check for a driving-based job profile since it digs out every information regarding the applicant’s driving history and violations. Similarly, running a social media screening for jobs related to online interaction is profitable too.

However, employers need to be careful as investing additional efforts and resources in unrelated domains provides useless data. Since the process needs to be effective and in compliance with laws, employers can opt for organisations like ours to run an advanced background check.