As start-up founders you work hard, spend sleepless nights & even miss out on many extra-curricular activities just to keep your company running.

You have built your business from the ground up.

All this effort has paid off, and now your start-up is picking up momentum & is poised to doing so well that you need to recruit some new staff.  This is when you have to Be Careful.

Your next hire could be the end of your business. How could something essential for your start-up bring about the downfall of all your hard work?

Hiring someone without vetting them puts you in a precarious position. You’ve given a complete stranger access to your most valuable assets – your company’s finances and reputation. Putting essential resources into someone else’s hands can spell disaster.

How To Protect Your Start-Up During The Hiring Process?

Simple, a background check on potential employees can protect your start-up and still help you make new hires.

1. Screening Protects Your Business Against Untrustworthy Employees  

Some job candidates misrepresent their qualifications by making you think their work experience or educational history is more impressive than it truly is, they can get a job they’re not qualified to do.  This leaves you with two major problems.

The obvious issue is that the employee is unable to do the work needed. The second is that you now have an employee who isn’t afraid of lying to you.

Incompetent employees not just mess up their own work,  They also disrupt other employees’ work. When a new hire does poor work, other people have to step in to fix it. Dealing with other people’s mistakes on top of their own can cause reliable employees to quit before you even know you have a problem.

Consider what happened at a Tech Start Up in Pune –  The business was valued for over 50 crores because of its stellar engineering team. Despite the start-up’s incredible team, the company ruined its success by making a wrong hire. This new engineer was remarkably bad at his job. He was so bad that the existing employees had to redo any “work” he did.

A combination of inferior work and bad personality caused the engineering team to fall apart. When management tried to replace those who left, the newer employees quit, as well. If the start-up had vetted the bad hire properly, it would have preserved its fantastic team and found a competent job applicant to join them.

Background checks do more than ensure a candidate is skilled enough for the job.

They also show if a job applicant has the qualification or degree needed for the position. Some jobs require the applicant to have a professional license or a postgrad degree. If you hire someone who doesn’t match the requirements, you could find yourself defaulting on compliances.

Screening your applicant’s history can also uncover lies.  Verification checks confirm that candidates have the work history and education the job requires. They can assure you that the job applicant has the skills your start-up needs to grow.

Weeding out incompetent or untrustworthy candidates isn’t all screening checks can do. Background checks go even further than that.

2.  Background Checks Protect Your Startup from Risky Hires

Risky hires can put your business in a dangerous situation. Job candidates with a criminal history could become a liability instead of an asset. Not only do your employees and clients need to be kept safe, but hiring an applicant with a violent past could lead to a legal and safety problems.

Background checks reveal if a job applicant has a criminal history. By showing you the candidate’s criminal past, they enable you to make better hiring decisions. Background checks can shield your business from more problems than negligent hiring. They can also protect you from violating your industry’s job requirements.

3. Background Checks Shield Your Business from Legal & Compliance Problems

Certain job positions need more vetting than others. Things that wouldn’t raise a red flag for one job may matter more for another. For that reason, certain industries and job positions legally require specific background checks.

Industries that legally require specific checks such as Police Clearance Certificate include Security Contractors, healthcare, finance, daycares, and education. These fields put workers into contact with sensitive information or vulnerable people. Giving this much power to a new employee can be disastrous if you don’t choose wisely.

A Hospital learned this lesson the hard way when it hired someone with a history of harassing and threatening women. The new employee ended up abusing an underage patient he was treating. Consequently, the hospital had to face the terrifying reality that an employee had harmed a patient and the legal consequences due to the heinous nature of crime

By running a specialized background check, you ensure a job applicant is the right fit for the job. It can also protect you legally, especially if the industry is highly regulated.

If you’re still wondering if background checks are right for your business, give them a try and check the results yourself.

Check It Out Yourself

You’ve put a lot of effort into building your startup. Don’t let a rotten hire ruin all your hard work. Protect your startup by using background checks to confirm applicants are as exceptional in real life as they look on paper.

As a startup, you may not have a formal hiring process, but you don’t need one. Having a professional background check run by a certified company like V Trace can give you peace of mind that your new employees are who they say they are. A background check can ensure your new hire has the right credentials and qualifications.

By screening your job applicants, you keep your start-up safe and secure.