When an opening in the ranks of senior management occurs, usually the vacancy is filled with a new outside hire or someone within the organization is promoted to fill the spot. There’s ordinarily no question about doing a thorough background check on the new hire. That just makes good sense. But for internal promotions, doesn’t it also make good sense to do an equally thorough background check?
You bet it does! Recently I wrote about the growing trend toward re-checking employees anywhere from annually to every five years. That also makes good sense because people change over time and because it’s always better to be safe than sorry. The same logic applies to people being promoted within an organization. Furthermore, the more significant the position is to the organization, the more thorough the check should be. The higher the visibility of the position and the person in it, the more sense it makes to do a careful background and reference check. It might also make sense to retain the services of a professional pre-employment screening company – like Barada Associates – to do the checking for your organization, including not just a public records check, but also a media check, a reference report, and verification of all the basic resume/application information to make sure there’s nothing lingering in the candidate’s past that might have been missed before.
So, doing a thorough background check prior to announcing an important internal promotion makes very good sense.