Many employers are making the decision to do background checks on potential employees prior to hiring them. In the past, employee background checks were a hit or miss proposition, with employers running the potential employee's name through the database with local law enforcement.

This simple criminal background check was not without problems, however. If the potential employee had a criminal record, he could simply move to another jurisdiction and often escape detection.

However, not all background checks are for criminal matters. Perhaps the person you are thinking of hiring had trouble on his last job and was suspected of wrongdoing, but was fired, rather than arrested. Local law enforcement would, of course, have no record of that, and in the past, the applicant would merely not give that job as a reference, or would give a friend's name as the reference for that job.

Another reason employers would consider doing employee background checks is not popular, but it is a fact of life: Many employers are now doing credit screening on job applicants, assuming (whether right or wrong) that if the applicant is sloppy in financial matters, then they will be sloppy in their work habits as well. In the past, the employer had no real way of checking this except to call the applicants bank and any references the applicant provided.

Perhaps the common problem with the old methods of doing background checks is obvious; they all depended upon the honesty of the applicant in the first place. You had to trust the applicant when he said he had always lived in this area. If the applicant gave you a work reference with a phone number, you assumed it was correct, because you had no real way to check it. If an applicant did in fact have financial trouble or a poor credit file with his bank or other references, you can be sure that is not the references they would provide to potential employers. In other words, you were at the mercy of the applicant to supply accurate information and, as the computer programmers are fond of saying, garbage in, garbage out.

Well, in the last 10 years, the Internet has changed many things, and one of them is the way that employee and criminal background checks are handled. What in the past took an afternoon of phone calls now takes less than ten minutes with a reliable online database. Where in the past you had to rely upon the integrity of the job applicant to supply you with accurate information, these days all that is required is a date of birth and a social security number and their life story is laid out before your eyes.

In addition to the commercially available method of doing background checks, the data received is generally more accurate than ever, because now law enforcement all over the world share information across the Internet. Additionally, the credit bureaus routinely share data on the people in their credit files, to make certain their files are as accurate as possible.