Why Should You Have a Background Check Done on Yourself?

This is a common question from many of my clients, and illustrates some very helpful reasons for having background checks done on ourselves in the first place. We, as private investigators, often get calls with an individual requesting a background check done on themselves if they have applied for several jobs and made it through the interview process and not been offered job once the background was performed. If that happens several times to an individual, it can leave the person feeling a bit paranoid and wondering what skeletons may be lurking in their digital closet. Databases and clerks DO make mistakes and errors. We see this on an occasional basis where a name and date of birth matched with a serious criminal matter and matched with our client/subject. However, the more likely scenario is that you have something pulling on your background that you weren’t aware of: it could be from your past, and while you may have forgotten about it years ago, it’s still showing up on your background check as if it were yesterday.

Peace of Mind Investigations can open a file and do a background on you as the client AND the subject. If you have reason to suspect that you are being judged on a record that does not belong to you this may give you peace of mind. Or, if we uncover something on your background that might look troubling, it will give you time to have it scrubbed from your record (if it’s illegitimate) or prepare a potential employer for a less-than-ideal background check result. NOTE that this can be done as a very simple or basic background or we can do a much more comprehensive search.

If there does happen to be an error we can help get it cleared up. This can be as simple as a letter on letterhead explaining what was found and requesting that whichever entity has the error corrects it. If no error is found then it usually is just bad luck or needing to sharpen interview skills that is the culprit. Either way knowledge is power: Once you know exactly what a potential employer will uncover about you, you can prepare for the worst-case scenario.