Essential background checks to find a good employee for the workplace

Having an attractive and user-friendly website is a must in a world that’s becoming increasingly digital. If you have a large company with a lot of trade, you’ll probably want a full-time employee working for you, while a small business just launching an e-shop could use a freelancer. 

Either way, a good employee will basically hold the keys to your business presence and if they’re also in charge of your company’s internal network they might have access to highly sensitive information. You need to make sure that the employee you hire is trustworthy.

How do you find a good employee?

If you’re looking for a full-time employee, you’ll probably post an ad or contact a recruiting agency.

However, if you’re thinking of a part-time position or need someone you can call upon as needed, check out freelancer portals.

You’ll want someone very good at their job as much of your business’s success depends on the quality of your website.

Look at the resumes and see what school they went to and what sort of degree they have. When you make a shortlist for job interviews, make sure to go online and check if they did indeed attend the schools they mention. This can easily be done by accessing the school’s database and searching for their name.

However, this is no guarantee they’re actually good. You’ll need references from previous employers, which you should also check.

Last, but not least, ask the job applicants to show you the projects they’ve worked on before. See if you like the websites they designed. If you don’t have technical knowledge, ask someone who has if those web pages are any good.

Ask for a criminal background check

This is a must if that person will be working for you full time. You want to be sure they don’t have a criminal record, especially convictions for offenses such as theft, fraud or embezzlement. If they’ll have to work on anything related to money or payments made through your company’s website, that’s an open invitation for a criminal to steal from you.

Also, if they’ll be in charge of the company’s intranet, they might have access to your bank accounts and business transactions.

At the same time, if you’re a start-up full of big plans and innovative products or services, you need to keep them under wraps. If you hire just anyone off the street, they might easily steal your business ideas and sell them to the competition.

In countries like Australia, the fastest way to do a background check on someone is to use an online character check agency like the ANCC whose website is australiannationalcharactercheck.com.au and the process is fully online for bpss screening. Such bodies are accredited with the government and criminal history records for all states and territories of the country. If the candidate in front of you has ever committed an offense anywhere in the country, you’ll know about it. These online agencies have highly intuitive websites (and obviously good designers), so ordering a criminal record check on someone won’t take more than a few minutes. The results come back via email in a couple of days, just enough time for you to finish the job interviews.

If they have a clean criminal history, you can go ahead and hire the candidate with the most impressive resume.