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How to avoid hiring a dodgy employee

Need a new employee? If you’re looking for new talent to join the business you might be anxious to find the right person. It’s important that you make the right decision and employ someone you can trust to be a part of your business. Unfortunately, a job interview can only tell you so much, and you might miss crucial information about the trustworthiness (or lack thereof) of your potential new employee. To do you due diligence on a future employee, you need to do more than just ask a few open ended questions.

When finding the right person, it’s likely you’ve followed standard protocol. Put up a job ad, read over countless resumes, picked your finalists from the best applications and brought them in for an interview or two. In these interviews you’ve likely carefully planned your interview questions to try to assess the your potential candidate’s personality and suitability for the job. You’ve also likely called their references to double check. This is all excellent work! However, this only helps you work out if their skills match the role. It does next to nothing to work out of your future employee is dishonest, untrustworthy, and a potential threat to your business.

But what about their work history and references? Well, sadly, a quick phone call isn’t really enough to prove the validity of their claims. You could be being fed a complex set of lies and deceptions. Their resume could be terribly exaggerated or even completely false. Their interview could be a well rehearsed act that will drop the second you hire them. Their reference could be a friend that they’ve paid, or could be carefully selected from one job where they did well or didn’t get caught in whatever their scam is. While everyone chooses to give their best reference, some people can be trying to hide a very big negative trait, such as theft, abuse and misuse of the company assets, a problem with absenteeism, laziness or even incompetence.

So what can you do to make sure your new hire is who they say they are? The best thing to do, especially in high risk hires in important positions, is to find out if they’re hiding anything. A private investigator can perform a background check or investigation on any number of potential employees to make sure they are who they say they are. This can confirm that their past checks out, confirm which university they went to, if their resume job history is accurate, and can discover red flags like prior convictions, lies and shady circumstances in their past. It can also give you an idea of their character, as your private investigator can find out little things that you can use to get an idea as to their behaviour.

Ultimately, your aim is to make sure your employee is right for the job. If you leave your trust in their resume and references, you leave the control of information in their hand. Reduce the risk of hiring a shady and potentially damaging employee and give us a call on 1300 721 715 or email info@eliteinvestigations.com.au so we can help you hire the right person.