Employee Rights in Pre Employment Screening Background Checks

Personal interviews and cursory screening practices are no longer enough to assure employers that candidates for employment are worth hiring. A pre employment screening background check can reveal with much finer accuracy the degree of risk you might really be taking by employing any given individual.

In fact, some companies may feel obligated to perform at least an employee criminal background check as they could be held legally responsible for the criminal actions of any employee on whom they had not performed a pre employment screening background check.

Whether or not you - the prospective employee - have something to hide, your privacy should be respected and the information received from any background check services should be considered reasonably, fairly, and without undue prejudice. For, even if you have no shady past that a pre employment screening background check may shed light on, there is no guarantee that your prospective employer won't hold controversial but perfectly legal behavior against you (ie. late payments on loans, military record, a history of moving violations, multiple marriages and divorces, etc.).

In case you're ever subjected to a pre employment screening background check, here are a few of your rights that you should know:

Employers may not request medical records or ask about an applicant's disability - nor are they legally allowed to make an employment decision based on an apparent or disclosed disability (unless it directly impacts their ability to perform the particular job).
The military can disclose your name, rank, salary, assignments and awards without your consent.
School records are considered confidential and cannot be released to anyone without the prior consent of the student.
Although anyone can find out whether or not you had filed for bankruptcy, individuals cannot be discriminated against for having done so.

Additionally, under Federal law, background check services are forbidden from revealing, and employers conducting employee criminal background checks on you are forbidden from looking up, the following information or basing an employment decision on any of it, even if the information is available through public records (and much of it is):

Arrest records, records of civil lawsuits, and civil judgments older than 7 years
Accounts put into for collection more than 7 years ago
Paid tax liens after 7 years
Any other negative information 7 years after the fact, barring criminal convictions

Employers can and do, however, look up litigation records in a pre employment screening background check to ascertain whether the prospective employee might be a troublemaker. Employers study pre employment screening background checks to weed out:

Ccandidates who have filed discrimination lawsuits on previous employers - whether they won or not (nobody wants to get sued)
Whistleblowers who file qui tam suits (especially if the employer does any government work)

Additionally, employers in transportation will give extra weight to a candidate's driving record. Driving records are not confidential either and can be released (and included in pre employment screening background checks) without consent.

By holding these rights in mind, you can walk into any potential employment situation comfortable that there will be no embarrassing surprises should the employer conduct a pre employment screening background check on you.

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