Finding employment in today’s economy is difficult at best, and applicants are finding themselves having to go through stringent qualifications including a complete background check regarding their credit score, criminal and court records, insurance claims, and driving record.  In addition, more companies now perform a complete background check on their current employees as a means to layoff and hire a more qualified or cheaper labor pool.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the current rate of U.S. unemployment at 9.7% on June 17, 2009.  Since 1990, the employment rates have never reached such a high level.  Needless to say, the competition for available jobs is high.  Employers are flooded with applications.  You need to both stand out and make sure that you have no mistakes on your current application.

In addition to a killer resume, job applicants are now doing their own comprehensive background checks before they fill out any questions regarding their employment eligibility.  For instance, let’s say you were involved in a series of traffic violations a few years back that you forgot to mention in your application.  You could be immediately disqualified for not being forthcoming with the information, even though it was a simple mistake.

In order to prevent this from happening, job hunters are going above and beyond their own call of duty and performing their own complete background check.  This allows them to see what will be reported to the potential employer and dispute or report all information in order to gain further trust.

You have a couple of different options when you conduct a national background check.  There is a limited amount of free records, but this could let you know if you are being confused with another person that has the same name as you.

I met someone a couple years ago that kept applying for jobs at nursing homes and rehabilitation centers and getting turned down.  He couldn’t figure out why until he asked the last person that turned him down.  They stated that they found information on his background check that was not in his favor.  When he researched the information, he figured out that it was someone else with the same name.

Little did he know that by federal law, employers are required to tell employees or potential employees of the deprecating information that they found.  In his case, if he had conducted a complete background check on himself, he may have been able to identify the problem before he was turned down for at least ten different jobs.

Don’t find yourself in the same position.  A complete background check on a national database is the quickest and cheapest way to get all of your answers.

Image taken on 2009-04-16 08:45:16. Image Source. (Used with permission)