State laws regulate the use of credit information and criminal records for employment purposes
✍ Scribed by Kathleen Barton; Charles M. Rice
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 99 KB
- Volume
- 38
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0745-7790
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Conducting background checks on applicants and employees in connection with employment decisions has become a common practice for employers of all sizes. Obtaining background information about an individual can help an employer recognize dangerous propensities that could expose the employer to liability for negligent hiring or negligent retention, identify facts that render the individual unsuitable for a particular job, detect false information on an individual's employment application or résumé, and assess the individual's character and trustworthiness. Many employers obtain background information from third-party vendors generically called consumer-reporting agencies. Others conduct their own background checks by directly contacting persons and institutions that have had personal contact with the individual in question.
For many years, the primary legal concern for employers conducting background checks was compliance with federal and state laws establishing procedures that employers had to follow when they obtained information on employees and applicants from a consumer-reporting agency. At the federal level, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) regulates how employers can obtain background-information reports (called "consumer reports") from a consumer-reporting agency. It requires that employers comply with certain consent-and-notice requirements before obtaining a consumer report on an applicant or employee and requires that