Information to Keep

Throughout the recruiting and hiring process, we encourage you to create a personnel record for each person you hire, and to retain application materials from those who you don't hire. Many of these records can help establish that an employment action you took was appropriate, in the event of a civil suit charging wrongful conduct on your part. By documenting every step of your reference and background checks, you can show that you acted reasonably in hiring the applicant based on the information that you had.

To that end, create and keep the following documents as you perform reference and background checks:

Federal law. If you have 15 or more employees, federal antidiscrimination laws administered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission require you to keep records of all applicants, hired or not, for one year to ensure that you aren't excluding people in protected groups from consideration for employment.

Documents you must keep include: