Vetting & Screening: How far should you go?

You’ve done all the interviews, spoken with colleagues, agonised over teams, personalities, potential and development, and finally picked the one who has accepted your offer. What next? Well you could do the ‘old fashioned’ thing and ask them for a couple of references (which you may or may not take up), or you can undertake full pre-employment vetting and screening.

With the internet and easy access to information – which you can find yourself or engage a ‘vetting’ company to do for you – it is quite simple to thoroughly check an individual is who they say they are and has done what they say they have done. And much more besides, which is where the problem can lie.

Why check a potential employee anyway? For the security, reputation and financial standing of your business. At the end of the day you may have met the candidate for two to three hours at best and taken on trust everything they have said and written about themselves. You would check thoroughly a potential customer that wanted a £million credit line so why not an employee that could cost you that and more?

So what can you check?

For the relatively small sums charged by vetting agencies it looks to be worth it…