Purpose

• The purpose of a background check is for the employer to determine whether a person would make a suitable hire. While some background checks are performed with a security interest in mind -- for example, many government jobs require background checks to determine whether a candidate would be a security liability -- many are simply performed to get a sense of whether a person is trustworthy and responsible, and to verify the accuracy of his resume.
  
  

Public Records

• Many background checks make use of public records. These records are available to anyone who wants to look them up. Therefore, any information that an employer turned up in the course of his investigation would already be in the public domain. If an employer were to check the person's criminal records, he would turn up records of cases that have already been investigated by law enforcement authorities. So, it would be difficult for this to result in someone else getting into trouble.
  
  

Interviews

• Some employers will also conduct interviews with a person's previous associates. The questions that the employer asks will vary depending on the nature of the work and the thoroughness of the interviewer. The people who are interviewed are under no legal obligation to tell the truth. A person is not going to be subpoenaed or required to testify under oath about his knowledge of the person. There are few scenarios in which such interviews would create problems for another party.
  
  

Considerations

• One of the few potential ways that a background check could cause trouble for another person would be if the interview portion of the check revealed the commission of a crime by a party who was not charged or prosecuted for the crime. For example, an interviewer could discover that an associate of the candidate had used drugs when asking questions about the associate's recreational habits. Whether an interviewer chooses to report this crime to authorities would be up to him, but he has no legal obligation to.