Critical Thinking: Going Beyond the Job

Critical Thinking: Going Beyond the Job

Critical thinking is the practice of actively and carefully evaluating information before accepting or acting on it — questioning assumptions, weighing evidence, considering alternative explanations, and reaching conclusions through reason rather than habit, bias, or instinct.

I know not everyone gets coffee in the morning and does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle. But there’s a lot of satisfaction in knowing you went above, that you did your absolute best.

In background checks, for example, does your screener:

Go beyond reviewing the SSN Trace?

If you have an applicant from New Mexico who also has an address in Clark County, Washington, within the last seven years, that’s an easy catch; search Clark County, Washington.

BUT WAIT. What if the applicant has no address appearing in their trace from Washington state, but their driver’s license is from Washington? That’s when we start scratching the dirt. Use our resources. Washington has a statewide database of records. We can’t get much information from it, but it did tell us that the applicant has a record in Clark County, Washington. So that’s where we search. Critical thinking.

Go beyond the simple searches?

We find a record in a magistrate's court, a felony charge that was clearly bound over to the district court, but there’s no record in the district court. We find mistakes in the court records all the time—names get misspelled, birthdates are incorrect. Call the court and find the record. It’s what we do. Critical thinking.

Go beyond the call to a school that’s required?

We are a full-service background screening. We verify employment, education, and call references.

And this time of year (summer), that means going beyond leaving a message for the registrar’s voicemail. It doesn’t make sense to leave messages on June 11 for someone who won’t return to their desk until July 20.

So, we leave a message for the registrar, then call the school secretary, and if we can’t reach them, we call the district to find out if anyone there can help, when the school will reopen, and when the registrar will return. Critical thinking.

Going beyond the call to references that’s required?

References. The industry standard is to call each reference once a day for five days. And we do. But because a lot of the numbers are personal, we will call in the evening. On a Saturday afternoon. It’s like the old joke about the guy looking for his keys under a lamppost. The cop comes over to help and finally asks the guy, " Are you sure you lost them here? He replies, no, I lost them in the park. But the light’s better here.

We call when it’s most likely we will reach people. Critical thinking.

These critical thinking measures from Cutting Edge Background will make or break your background screening efforts. A new customer told me that her previous screener was unreachable when people tried to call them back—bounced emails, full voicemails.

We do it right because we’ve done it for thirty years, 50years of combined experience. Hands on, knowing what customers need.

-Sound good? Reach out to us today. Ann@CEVerify.com.

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