What Does A Paycom Background Check Look For?

Paycom's background check process is a comprehensive and customizable solution that helps employers make informed hiring decisions while ensuring compliance with legal and industry standards. With a strong focus on compliance, efficiency, and detail, it ensures businesses hire the best-fit candidates while safeguarding workplace safety and organizational reputation.

Here’s a detailed guide on what does a Paycom background check look for:

Paycom's background checks include a range of screenings tailored to meet job-specific requirements. Below are the primary elements:

Criminal Record Checks

Paycom’s system explores federal, state, and local criminal databases to uncover any past offenses. These checks help employers minimize risks by ensuring they hire individuals who align with their workplace safety and security standards.

Why Is It Important?

Criminal record checks are crucial for protecting the safety of employees, clients, and customers. By identifying any past criminal behavior, employers can make more informed decisions about a candidate's suitability for a given role. This helps reduce the risk of workplace violence, fraud, or misconduct.

In highly regulated sectors, such as healthcare or education, these checks are often required to comply with industry regulations and maintain a safe environment for vulnerable populations.

Education And Employment Verification

Fraudulent claims about education and past employment can lead to mismatched hires. Paycom verifies academic qualifications, certifications, and employment history to confirm candidates meet the role's requirements.

Why Is It Important?

Verifying education and employment history ensures that candidates have the skills, qualifications, and experience they claim. Hiring someone without verifying their credentials can result in hiring underqualified employees, potentially harming an organization's reputation, performance, or security.

Credit Checks

Financial responsibility is crucial for roles like finance or accounting. Paycom conducts credit checks to evaluate candidates’ financial behavior, including payment histories and outstanding debts. While not all employers require credit checks, they are essential for ensuring trust in roles involving monetary transactions.

Why Is It Important?

Credit checks are essential for positions where employees handle financial transactions or sensitive financial data. Candidates with poor financial behavior may be prone to issues like financial stress or dishonesty, which could impact their ability to perform their jobs or even lead to workplace misconduct, such as embezzlement.

Public Records And Identity Verification

Paycom checks identity-related documents against public records, ensuring the authenticity of provided details. This includes searches in sanction lists, civil court records, and watchlists to highlight any discrepancies.

Why Is It Important?

Identity verification is important for preventing fraud and ensuring that the person applying for the job is who they claim to be. By confirming identity through public records, employers can prevent cases of identity theft, verify the accuracy of personal details, and mitigate the risk of hiring someone with a history of criminal or fraudulent activity.

Drug And Health Screening

For industries with safety-sensitive roles, drug testing and health screening ensure candidates meet legal and organizational standards. Employers can choose from a variety of tests, depending on job requirements.

Why Is It Important?

Drug testing and health screening are important to ensure that employees can safely perform the duties required of them, especially in high-risk or safety-sensitive environments. Workers under the influence of drugs or alcohol are more likely to make mistakes, jeopardize their own health, or put others at risk.

Global Screening

With the increasing globalization of the workforce, Paycom offers international screening options to verify candidates with overseas education or work experience. This feature is particularly relevant for multinational corporations.

Why Is It Important?

Global screening ensures that international candidates have the necessary qualifications, experience, and legal background to work in the company’s country. For multinational companies, this is essential for ensuring compliance with both local and international laws.

Without global screening, there could be risks related to fraudulent qualifications, unreported criminal activity, or discrepancies in employment history that could affect the company’s global reputation and operations.

While the vendor hasn’t revealed how far does the Paycom background check go, it is generally believed that background checks cover different timeframes, depending on the position. For example, it goes back from seven to ten years for criminal and federal checks, three to seven years for motor vehicle records (MVR) and employment verifications, and seven years or longer for credit checks.