What does a background check entail?

They’re checking to see if you’ve been arrested for or convicted of criminal activity. Pretty sure your record is cleared after you turn 18. So long as you’ve been good, they won’t turn up anything bad.

Welcome to Fluther.

The depth and breadth of a “background check” varies depending on 1) how much trust will be placed in you: a CIA operative normally gets a deeper and more thorough background check than a supermarket cashier, and 2) by the willingness of the person doing the hiring (and requesting the check) to pay for it. Again, the federal government is more willing to spend the money to marshal the resources and pay for a background check of a person’s entire life, to the extent that it can be investigated: questioning former neighbors and working colleagues, ranging over an adult’s complete history to check that it’s in accordance with what he has claimed as a history, looking for discrepancies, etc.

In your case, the investigator will probably only do a records and previous employment check on you. They will look to see if you have any criminal complaints or convictions, and talk to prior employers (if any) to see if there were problems with trust associated with that.

Every background check that I’ve ever known about (to my knowledge I haven’t had any run on me, but we’ve had employees whose “casual” employment in the nuclear field required an investigation in the normal course of employment) has been specified: “A five-year background check”, for example. If they find something worth noting, such as the fact that you said you were doing one thing five years ago but you were doing something else entirely, then they may dig further to see if this can be explained as “oversight / omission” or “deliberate falsification”.

They will probably check your credit history (if you’re handling cash they might not want someone who is in a financial crisis) and your criminal background. They will also confirm your work history and verify your references.

Thank you for the answers. To my knowledge I never had to go through a background check and I’m a little worried about something on my record from 35 years ago. And if I’m not mistaking I think the incident was expunged. Well, just a few more days to worry.

Thank you CWOTUS for the welcome. I think I like it here.

Credit history, criminal arrests, and whether you are bondable.

Bondable means their money is insured, if a person steals it..

It depends, when I got my Top Secret clearance, they checked all my living relatives, and even my diseased grandparents. They also checked for police and juvenile records. They even checked the mail records and found that I was getting literature from the Soviet Union (QSL radio identification cards).

I got the clearance but I doubt that with my current politics and writings I could get one today. That’s fine because I don’t want to work for an agency that requires that type of clearance.

In Australia they call this a Police Clearance or a Criminal Record Check. The Criminal Record Check is a lot more detailed regarding the information collected. For example if you were a suspect in relationship to a crime and you were not charged this will still be recorded on the Criminal Record Check. A police clearance check, however, only records criminal charges. Therefore in Australia the CRC is used within services such as childcare, foster care, disability sector and aged care etc, in order to prevent the occurrence of hiring personnel who have been assoicated with abuse of children/disability/elderly but have not been officially charged. I personally really like this new procedure as too many times the law protects those who are knowledgeable regarding the in’s and out’s of law legislation.