Background Checks

The pressure on individuals and businesses to earn greater rewards has never been more acute than today. Most tread a sincere and legitimate path, some though choose a less honest approach. Identity fraud is more common today as is the tendency for individuals to exaggerate achievements. Some go to great lengths to build an entirely fake persona just to land the job of their dreams, while others take deceptive steps to make a business look more attractive than it actual is to maximise a sale.

It has never been more important today than to thoroughly investigate the background of a potential employee or a company that you may wish to do serious business with. More so for executive appointments, where the individuals recruited hold positions of considerable power and influence.

Within our background check division, there are three distinct teams:

• Pre-employment screening – this team works with HR and managers to run background checks on potential employees.
• Company background checks – this team enables company directors and business leaders to have a greater understanding of a company and its decision-makers before doing business with them.
• Individual background checks – this team helps individuals to verify a potential partner they have met online, through a dating agency, or even in real-life.

Why conduct a background check?

Let’s use three real cases to illustrate the importance of background checks. The first one involved a potential employee, the second one involved a company, and the third one involved an individual.

Real case #1
Company A was advertising for a creative director and had asked each applicant to share their portfolio. One candidate stood out because his portfolio contained many excellent pieces of work. But when we ran a pre-employment screening, it became apparent that he did not have the work experience he claimed he had. He also took other people’s work and passed them off as his own. The candidate did not just tell a few white lies on his CV, he was a fraudster.

Real case #2
Company B was engaged by an audio-visual company to manage a multi-million-dollar digital marketing campaign. Company B did the initial work but before moving to phase two, they asked for a 10% payment. The client gave a string of excuses, often involving their bank accounts being frozen by banks due to them being a victim of fraud. But when Company B called our team to perform a thorough company background check, we found out that the company was insolvent.

Real case #3
Person C was a widow who got to befriend a person with a respectable job from a dating website. Very quickly, this person asked for her mobile number and started to send text, spinning heart-warming stories to lure in the widow. Within weeks, the widow began sending the person money. It was then the children of the widow realised that something was amiss. They engaged our individual background check service to conduct a thorough search and very quickly, we found that the profile on the dating website belonged to someone else and the widow was actually talking to a fraudster.

In summary, the three services (pre-employment screening, company background checks and individual background checks) aim to:

• Verify the person you want to hire is who they say they are
• Verify the company you want to do business with is being honest
• Fulfil due diligence
• Keep your company safe
• Safeguard your reputation
• Save you time and money
• Provide peace of mind

Pre-employment screening

It is thought that 85% of job applications lie on their CVs. They often embellish their qualifications, exaggerate their skills, and being vague about the duration they stayed with a company.

They are also candidates who would intentionally hide certain information from you, like they would withhold certain employment history which saw them being fired because they had caused financial harm through theft and fraud. If you don’t check it yourself, or if you don’t engage a pre-employment screening expert like our team at Blackhawk Intelligence to verify a candidate’s history, this piece of undisclosed (but highly critical) information is likely to remain hidden until they repeat their tricks and steal from your company.

Pre-employment screening removes the guesswork and reduces the risks your company faces, particularly when filling executive positions. At Blackhawk Intelligence, we provide fast, accurate, and cost-effective pre-employment screening services, and our results will give you the information and confidence to choose the right employees.

International pre-employment screening

Increasingly, pre-employment screening also involves cross-border background checks as talents move from one global city to another. In some countries, criminal records and litigation checks are not readily available, making it difficult for your HR department to truly know the person they are hiring. Give our pre-employment screening team a call on +44 (0)20 8108 9317 because with an extensive network of investigative partners around the world, we can certainly help with cross-border background checks.

Company Background Checks

Company or business checks allow company directors and business leaders to mitigate risks and increase business opportunities by obtaining an in-depth company profile of another company and their decision-makers. It is also a verification process to determine if the other company has the appropriate license to operate.

Most of the searches we do can include but not limited to:

• Verifying a company’s legal status
• Verifying a company’s history and business address
• Determining a company’s credit worthiness
• Confirming its license or permit
• Confirming its directors and decision-makers
• International search, anything from registries to financial statements in another country.

One of the top benefits of business background checks is that the process helps to reduce company debts from clients that have a bad credit history and often fail to make payments to various business partners. Knowing their less-than-ideal credit worthiness before you start selling to them will allow you to either stop the transactions or insist on cash terms only.

Checking up a charity before donating money or including them in your will is also becoming common. In the UK, there are about 166,000 charities with a total annual turnover of just under £48 billion. Most of the charities are actively involved in causes that help to make the world a better place, but they are charities which aren’t registered or properly managed. So before becoming a sponsor to a charity, engage our business background checks service to verify that they are legitimate and accountable.

International company or business background checks

Our specialists at Blackhawk Intelligence can perform business checks in London, the UK and internationally. Over the years, we have amassed a global network of business investigators and intelligence experts who can provide us with the data that you need. This is particularly helpful if your new business partner is located in a foreign country or if you are thinking about verifying local contacts in another country.

Individual background checks

Personal fraud, identity theft and romance scams are age-old techniques of deception, but they become prolific with the help of technology and the internet. In this day and age, fraudsters in another country can easily trick you into sending them money. Even without the internet, there are fraudsters ready to assume a false identity and exploit you.

Losing money, although painful, is less severe than you were being manipulated into breaking the law, anything from insider trading to establishing a shell company to launder illicit money for them.

If your gut tells you that something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Engage our background checks service and allow us to give you peace of mind.

Background checks at your fingertips

Blackhawk Intelligence has been assisting companies and individuals in London, the UK and abroad with fast, accurate and cost-effective background checks services.

We are professional and honest. We will discuss your case with you before taking action, so you know the fees before you start. With us working alongside you, you can be certain that:

• We respect confidentiality.
• Our investigative methods include database, resource, network and discreet enquiries.
• We verify, analyse and cross-reference before giving you the final report.
• We can assist with international/ cross-border cases.
• We deliver outstanding work with no hidden charges.

Contact us today on +44 (0)20 8108 9317 if you want to:

• Verify that a potential employee is honest and possesses the right qualifications and experience.
• Find out a business and its decision-makers before engaging them.
• Determine the person you met online or from a dating website is really who they say they are.
• Find out if an individual who makes big promises is not manipulating you into breaking the law.

Call us to find how you can use our background checks services to benefit your business and protect your reputation.