This is a true story: A business owner wanted to hire a Kitchen Manager for his restaurant. The resume looked promising with the applicant having over ten years of culinary, restaurant and management experience. The interview went great and the applicant impressed the owner with his charismatic appearance. The owner performed the reference checks and felt assured that the applicant had a solid record of performance. The owner made the job offer and a handshake sealed the deal. The Kitchen Manager was hired.
About four months into the employment, the business owner noticed on the P&L that food cost had increased over the last two months and sales went down. He asked the Kitchen Manager who responded that some food vendors had raised their prices and guests didn’t buy certain menu items as much as they used to. The numbers did not improve, and a gut feeling prompted the owner to do his own investigation in the matter. He was surprised to find out that the vendors had not raised their prices. He also found out that inventory items arrived but officially never left the shelves. However, inventory counts showed that the inventory was reduced. The owner wondered what was going on. He looked at his video surveillance footage and observed that his Kitchen Manager was handing food to a stranger through the backdoor every night just before closing. He confronted the Kitchen Manager with the evidence, who admitted the serious infraction, and the owner fired him on the spot. From another source, the owner learned later that his Kitchen Manager had a series of criminal charges on his record from misdemeanors to felony charges.
“How could that happen? I thought I had a great candidate when I hired him”, the owner was wondering. He spoke to a friend who asked him, “Did you do a background check?” The owner responded, “No, I did not. They are so expensive, and you have to wait days to finally get the results.” The owner recognized that he had lost a lot more money through the employee’s theft than what a background check would have cost. On top of that, he was without a Kitchen Manager once again and needed to re-hire and invest in onboarding a new employee, which by itself had a $4,000 price ticket. Combined with the loss from the theft, the owner had lost $11,500. The background check would have cost him a small fraction of that amount.
This story is only one example why background checks are critical to good hiring decisions. Especially for key positions where employees are in contact with customers or handling money and inventory, background checks should be part of a company’s hiring policy. Background checks can prevent serious problems such as loss, liability, and litigation as the result of a bad hiring decision.
Many background check agencies will take three business days to deliver results. Speed is important, because hiring managers want to fill positions quickly. We provide reliable background check results within one business day. Our background checks are comprehensive packages and cover thorough, national search results with focus on criminal and/or credit checks. All it takes is a simple 1-page form to complete, and we do the rest. Doing background checks can’t get easier than that!
Marlies McKie, Recruiting Manager, People First Inc.
