More than eighty percent of employers conduct some type of background search on new employees. I have been in the background check industry for over thirteen years and in that time have performed tens of thousands of these background checks.

The fact is that one in eight people has a criminal record. If you factor in all aspects of a background check, such as past employment, education, and professional license, you’ll find that the number of applications with (intentional) misinformation increases by 35 to 40 percent.

People call our offices all the time to see if we can run a background check before their potential employer does. They want to know if that college misdemeanor disorderly conduct will show up on your record. They want to see what the manager they didn’t get along with will say about them when the potential new employer calls for a reference.

Below I’ve listed important information to know about your background check and try to clear up some common misconceptions. Please note that there is no such thing as a standard background check. Each company performs varying degrees of background checks determined by the position and based on what they are willing to spend per applicant on due diligence.

Important Points About Employment Background Checks

1) Criminal record

Please read the application carefully. He will most likely ask if you have been convicted of a crime, not arrested. There is no need to report arrests that did not result in convictions if the application does not ask for this information. Many will argue that an employer cannot legally ask him if he has been arrested; however, 36 states allow arrest information to be considered in the hiring decision. Check with your state workplace safety department to be sure.

Often people are not sure if their arrest resulted in a conviction. Simply put, if you plead guilty to a crime, it’s technically a conviction, even if you received probation or supervision. If he was found not guilty, the case was dismissed, or there was no probable cause, “nolle pros,” then the case is not a conviction. There are a couple of rare exceptions to this based on individual state laws.

Never assume a case has been expunged unless you have actually paid a lawyer to request expungement and it has been approved by a judge, or you have filed the appropriate documents yourself. Applicants often call our office when they are not hired as a result of their background check and say “I thought that case was expunged.” If you did not go through the cancellation submission procedure and were not approved, then the record is still available to view.

Employers are NOT limited to 7 years on a criminal history search. Some states have their own Fair Credit Reporting Act rules that limit what crimes are reportable after seven years, often based on position and how much you pay. However, under federal FCRA standards, a conviction can be reported indefinitely. The “7 year rule” generally applies to arrests that did not result in a conviction. However, arrests are not indicators of guilt, so an employer should not disqualify you based on an arrest without further investigation into the circumstances.

Even a conviction does NOT automatically disqualify you from employment. The offense must be directly related to the job you are applying for. (The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states that employers must weigh a variety of elements when considering convictions in hiring decisions. These include the nature and seriousness of the violation, the time elapsed, and whether the violation has some connection to the advertised position.) For example, a conviction for writing bad checks should not disqualify an applicant from driving a forklift. However, an aggravated assault conviction could disqualify an applicant from almost any job in which he or she would be working directly with others. It depends on the discretion of the employer in this case.

Question: Will any criminal conviction record be located in my file regardless of location or year of occurrence?

Answer: No, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t disclose it. A common misconception about criminal background checks is that they are really easy and quick to do. Thanks to TV shows like CSI, people tend to think that you type a name into a computer and it brings up all the criminal offenses that have been committed anywhere in the country.

The fact is that employers and vetting companies cannot access the NCIC system used by the police and the FBI unless the job requires a fingerprint check that is submitted electronically to the FBI.

Our standard method of determining where to look for criminal records is to run your social security number through our databases, which provides us with the places where you have resided for the past ten to twenty years. This also informs us of any maiden names that may be associated with you. Then the background check package (already implemented) determines how deep the investigation will go and how far back the criminal background check will go.

As a background check company, we would love it if each client company of ours could afford us to search every jurisdiction the applicant has lived in, but that is often not the case. We typically look for one to three of the most recent counties in which the applicant resided along with a search of the “national” criminal history database that contains more than 500 million criminal records on file across the country. These “national” crime databases are excellent secondary searches that provide extensive coverage, although they are far from perfect. Many federal and local jurisdictions do not submit information to these private databases, so they have many gaps in coverage. Searches of the national databases used for job screening do not compare to the actual NCIC search used by police and the FBI.

To make things more difficult for detection companies, federal records are kept entirely separate from county criminal records or national database searches. We must access a different system to check criminal records located in each of the federal jurisdictions in which the applicant resided.

So, is it possible that we can bypass a criminal record that an applicant has? Of course we could. However, if we locate you and you did not disclose it on the application when asked, you will most likely be disqualified for falsifying your application. This is true even if the record itself has not removed you from the position. In my opinion, the best thing to do is to disclose any criminal history information.

Remember that most employers really want the position and most don’t care if you made a mistake more than a few years ago. Many of our clients request that we not disclose cases that are older than 7 or 10 years unless they are felonies.

2) Verifications of previous employment/reference checks

Previous employers are unlikely to criticize you. It’s true, believe it or not. Even though your former manager, Doug, may have called you lazy three times a week and thought you stole pens from your desk every time you left the office, he most likely won’t reveal that information. At least not if your old company has an HR department. Big companies want to play it safe. They don’t want to deal with the ex-employee who doesn’t get the next job because of something they said. Standard policy is to say as little as possible and not express opinions. Most of the time, when our investigators call a company, they are immediately directed to the human resources department, which will only release standard information such as: dates of employment, job title, and salary. They will occasionally reveal whether you are eligible for future employment.

The exceptions to the rule are small businesses and legal obligation.

When we call a small business that does not have a human resources department or legal counsel, we may speak directly with the owner or someone who has worked directly with the applicant. In this situation, we tend to get a lot more detail, which can be a positive or a negative. If you left a small business on bad terms and have to include them as a reference to avoid a big gap in your employment schedule, you may want to provide an explanation to your prospective employer. Chances are they’ll still call the previous employer, but at least you’ve taken the time to clarify what happened, and they’ll know that any negativity expressed in the report may be more emotional than real.

The other exception is the legal/ethical obligation an employer has if you were fired due to illegal or outright dangerous behavior. The former employer may be open to civil litigation if they fail to disclose that you harmed someone, acted negligently, or committed a crime that led to your termination.

3) Credit Checks

Contrary to popular belief, a job credit report will NOT negatively affect your credit score!

A pre-employment credit report provides an employer with exactly the same information as a consumer credit report that a car dealer or bank may run when obtaining a loan. However, a pre-employment credit report does not show your credit score. Employers cannot make judgments based on your credit score.

The primary purpose of a credit report is to be an indicator of potential irresponsibility and propensity for theft. For example, if you have extreme debt due to credit card balances and multiple accounts in collection status and you are applying for a cash management job, it could be seen as a high risk of insider theft. Similarly, if you are applying to be a financial advisor and your credit report clearly shows your inability to manage your own money, it is unlikely that you will be trusted with your client’s money.

If you are turned down for a job after undergoing a background check, the company you applied to must provide you with a prior adverse action letter stating that you may not be hired because of something discovered during the background check, as well as how to provide you with a copy of the report. If they don’t, be sure to ask for a copy. The background check company should provide a toll-free phone number for their offices in case you have questions or want to dispute a finding. Most reputable background check companies will act quickly to re-verify any information you dispute and correct the report if necessary.

The more you know about the background check process, the better your chances of providing complete information without fear of shooting yourself in the foot. Always remember, the employer doesn’t want to trap you, but your priority will always be to protect yourself from liability and get a quality employee. So emphasize the good, explain the bad and don’t try to cover up a mistake as it could do more harm than good!