6 Reasons to run a background check

Background checks are essential in our everyday life. You can never be too sure about someone or something, especially when you are a parent or a homeowner. Some people disregard this sentiment and treat it as if it were paranoia – until something bad happens.

The internet has led us to believe we know people better than we do. We watch their social media profiles and think they are good to go – but how well can you know someone from their Instagram highlights?

Why wait? Take care of a problem before it even happens. You don’t have to wait until something bad happens, and you can truly get to know someone with a quick background check.

1. Getting to know those who will get to know your children.

This is probably the most important point of them all. When you hire a baby sitter or a caregiver, you are leaving your kid with an adult on a one-on-one session. You have to be sure of what you are doing before you allow that to happen.

Most people decide based on credentials, or even worse, a gut feeling. This might work, but it might also backfire tremendously – and that’s something you cannot afford as a parent. Your kids are the most precious thing you have in your life. The one thing you have to protect at all costs.

When you hire someone to protect them for you – for whatever reason – you need to be sure they are up to the task. A background check will let you get to know those who will know your children.

2. Learn about the people who will teach your children.

Unfortunately, schools aren’t the safe haven they are supposed to be. Don’t get me wrong, school teachers deserve our utmost respect and appreciation. But there are a small number of people who take advantage of this career to take advantage of children – something that is both despicable and easy to find out.

A background check will let you know if your children’s teacher has any prior criminal issues. It doesn’t matter what it is. Whether it’s something minor like speeding, something a little more troubling like a DUI, or a worst-case scenario – like a sex offender charge.

Remember: a background check is a quick, easy way to find out if certain adults can take care of our children.

3. Make sure no funny business is going on during playtime.

Unless your kids are friends with your lifetime acquaintances’ kids, there’s no way to truly know where they are going for a playdate. You could let them stay inside your house forever – but that would be as unhealthy as it gets.

There’s something else you can do: make sure you know who truly owns their playmate’s house. This isn’t wrong or over-the-limit. You are sending the most precious thing there is in your life into someplace else – the least you can do is know who owns that house.

You might think someone is okay because they smile at the school gate. Or because their kid is educated and happy. But you can never be too sure. They would never get to know about the background check. And if they did, they wouldn’t be upset unless there was something to hide.

4. Gather information to keep your home safe and secure.

We are living in modern times, one where we take all the help we can get. Our jobs are sometimes stressful enough before we even get into household chores – hiring someone to help us out isn’t bad at all. A house cleaner, domestic help, a gardener, and the like are great allies in all of this. But you wouldn’t let someone inside your house unless you know who that person is, right?

A background check allows you to screen anyone who wants to work for you inside your own house. That way, you can eliminate any potential threats before they come through the door.

You might think you don’t have any valuables inside your house to care about – but you probably have a TV, a sound system, a car, and many more things that are more expensive than you remember.

This is twice as important if you have children. You might run to the store and not realize you left your kids with a not-so-well-known house cleaner. Who knows what could happen? Or the IT guy, who came to repair your work computer.

You need to be sure about people before you let them in – and a background check is the safest, fastest way to know.

5. Protect yourself with a reverse pre-employment screening.

Whenever you interview for a job, there’s a somewhat big process that happens before you can begin working. It’s completely normal and expected.

There’s a formal interview first and there might be a second interview later on. Before you are officially hired, the company will run a background check on you. They want to know where you have worked before if you have a criminal background and anything that you might have not told them about.

This is completely normal behavior. Before they hire someone, they need to be sure it’s the right person for the job. You should do the same. Yes, you can probably find out about your company through LinkedIn or some other website – but what about your future boss and coworkers?

The very first thing you should do is a background check on your boss. Who knows if he or she has some sort of sexual misconduct charges? Or if they were involved in shady things like embezzlement. It’s a pre-employment screening, but reversed – they are doing it, so should you! Many people have told us that this is one of the key reasons to run a background check.

6. Reasons to run background checks in the digital era.

It’s the 21st century. You can probably learn about almost anyone from what they upload to Facebook and Instagram alone, right? Wrong. There’s one thing you have to take into consideration: whenever people upload something to social media, that’s when they are at their best. When was the last time you uploaded anything but a picture-perfect post? Everyone is the same. This is a very important reason to run a background check on people who are (or might become) important in your life.

You might get some information if you lurk around the internet. But you will only get to scratch the information-surface. Do you want to get to the bottom of things and be completely sure about someone? A background check is a shovel that’ll let you dig deep.

6 Reasons to run a background check