Background checks

Is that perfect candidate really who they say they are? A potential hire providing fraudulent identification could cause your DBS criminal check to fail or, worse, pass incorrectly. By building a background checking API like those supplied by Experian directly into your workflow, you can validate a candidate’s identity even before requesting DBS or Enhanced DBS reports.

Criminal record checks lack nuance. Some candidates may pass a DBS screening but hide financial irregularities or bad behaviour which could make them a poor fit for your company. Pre-employment checks can paint a more vivid picture. Experian, for instance, can offer reports on a candidate’s financial history, their activities on social media, as well as their personal references, to give you a reliable idea of an applicant’s character and status.

The slow pace of accurate pre-employment screening can bog down new employee onboarding. Some tools can automate and accelerate the vetting and screening process, however. One is Experian’s Candidate Verifier. It offers a full suite of checks in one place and feeds back the information you need in a clear, easy-to-understand format.

Background checks are not only for new employees. Work and education history doesn’t change, but life does, and criminal activity may alter the suitability of employees over time. Routinely re-screening employees with a post-employment background check, either individually or as a whole workforce, can help you identify any changes that may affect an employee’s right-to-work status over time. 

There are many reasons a director may be disqualified from holding a directorship – and the majority should raise a red flag about bringing that director on board in your own company or forming business associations with them. A tool like Experian’s Business Express includes a company director search facility that allows you to review a director’s current and previous appointments to discover whether they are barred from being appointed.

Even if a candidate is eligible to be a director, there’s no guarantee that their previous tenures were successful. Having comprehensive company credit information alongside director checks can give you the peace of mind you need to make the appointment. A solution like Experian’s Business Express, which provides both sets of data, is worth looking out for.

Running a director check on a potential supplier or client is a key part of due diligence. It helps you understand each business customer better and uncover other directorships that could suggest a conflict of interest. Experian’s suite of background checking tools can ensure you make the right decisions for your wider business.  

Director-checking tools could still prove highly useful even when recruiting individuals for less senior positions. The December 2020 Companies House statistics report lists 4,320,862 companies on its active register – a director check is an effective way of uncovering responsibilities that potential candidates may have outside of regular business hours.

Applicants eager to impress can fudge dates, bump up exam results, and even invent qualifications to appear more impressive on paper. Using a tool like Experian’s Candidate Verifier to authenticate their time in both work and education could make the difference between hiring a lowbrow fantasist and a fantastic high-flyer.

The what, where and when may be correct, but a CV often doesn’t go into the why. Experian’s Candidate Verifier can help with this. It can seek personal references and trace detailed employment records in order to paint a true picture of a candidate’s work history. 

Hiring candidates who don’t have the right to work in the UK could lead to fines of up to £20,000 from the Home Office for each illegal worker. Fortunately, there are solutions that can put those checks at the front of your workflow, highlighting which documentation is required, validating it automatically and prompting you to revalidate periodically. Experian’s Right to Work app does all that and also removes the need to keep paper copies.

Some candidates push their luck and enhance previous salaries to boost their apparent worth.  But with income and employment validation tools, like those offered by Experian, you can draw from payroll data to discover not only whether a candidate was employed by a given company but also how much they were paid.

At the market’s peak, over 3 million cars were sold in the UK in a single year, so you can be forgiven for not keeping track of everything yourself. With a tool like Experian’s AutoCheck, however, you don’t need to. It presents a visual timeline of previous vehicle sales, import, export and scrappage records, and can perform a car finance check to uncover any outstanding credit agreements on the vehicle. It can also help with DVLA keeper enquiries.

Constantly shifting trends means pricing in the automotive industry is volatile, so keeping track of developments is key. By incorporating a solution like the Cazana Companion into your workflow, you can receive accurate valuations instantly, allowing you to price competitively, buy fairly and achieve maximum profit.

If you’re managing a fleet, be it of company cars, used car stock or those in which you have a financial interest, monitoring those vehicles – and any potential risks they pose – can be difficult. One solution is Experian’s Asset Event Manager, which can help you monitor vehicles on an ongoing basis using real-time reports, while its Vehicle Stock Monitor can keep track of 5,000 vehicle records with up-to-the-minute valuations and finance tracking.

Cars sell, customers move, and your communications need to keep up. Happily, there is an easy way to stay on top of your records, help manage your financial interests and increase response rates. By using tools like Experian’s Owner Lookup and Automotive Data Cleanse tools, you can ensure that your data remains compliant and that you don’t contact customers that have moved on.