By Michael Klazema, special to Octane Blog

Most recruiters and hiring managers know that background checks are a vital part of any employee screening and onboarding process. However, while pre-employment background checks are commonplace in most jobs today, there are still numerous aspects of these checks that remain woefully misunderstood by most employers. Here are eight such aspects that every recruiter and hiring manager should know.

1. There is no “ultimate database” of criminal history
On television, the background check process seems so easy. Protagonists run the bad guy’s name through some magical database and voila: they have that person’s entire criminal history file on their computer screen within six seconds. In real life, the process isn’t so simple. There is no “ultimate database” of criminal information. Instead, criminal records are scattered nationwide and are stored at county courts and state repositories. As a result, there is no background check you can conduct on an applicant that is going to cover everything at once.