Although most state laws do not require conducting employee background check on employees for food businesses, it does not mean that you should not consider this. The truth is, a background check will help you a lot in hiring the right kind of employees that will contribute to the positive image of your restaurant.
For one, you will need qualified cooks or chefs to work in the kitchen. With the proliferation of resume falsifications, it is possible that you hire a chef that did not really graduate from a culinary school or did not really work for a well-known restaurant as he or she has claimed.
A background check will help you prevent such scenario because it can validate the information stated on the resume by supplying information about a person’s background especially his or her educational and employment history.
Apart from that, you will also need food servers and staff that would take care of the needs of the customers. As a restaurant owner, you are looking for people who are friendly, pleasant and have good communication skills. These characteristics can easily be derived through the interviews that you do with applicants.
However, if you want to know the real character of an applicant, you have to conduct a background search that will reveal information such as criminal records, medical records, sex offender’s list, character references, former residences, credit reports and many others.
It only makes sense that you would not want any employee who have had cases of felonies in the past or have medical records stating the presence of physical or mental illnesses. It would be hard to trust someone whom you know has been involved in theft or embezzlement. And you would not want your customers contracting a disease from a sick employee.
Needless to say, conducting a background search on your applicants should always be a part of your standardized hiring procedure.
