So, you've applied for a job and went through two rounds of interviews. At this point, a human resources representative has given you an offer but wants to do a background check first. While such a screening is done to verify the information on your resume and in the interview, it's also to examine your criminal past. Although companies legally can't bar a candidate with a criminal past from a position, having a clean background is more important to some job responsibilities than others, particularly for positions that involve working with children, the elderly, and the disabled. So, before you get a formal offer of employment, is a background check standard and what should you expect?

Criminal background checks vary in degrees but, for 95 percent of positions offered, such a screening is part of the application process. In fact, when employers don't even run a basic background investigation on a candidate, they run the risk of losing money. This may be in the form of wages or property and money stolen from a business. While this isn't the case with all criminals, not running an investigation on a person puts a business at such a risk.

Criminal background checks differ, however. A standard screening for criminal history examines police records from all locations an individual has lived over a period of type, typically seven to ten years. Both records for cities and states are examined. This is dependent, however, on all locations a person lists on an application for residences and jobs worked. If a person leaves a residence off, it may not be examined.

A more invasive approach involves fingerprints. Such screenings have become the norm for government and teaching positions, but all require a candidate to give a set of fingerprints to be compared with the FBI's national criminal database. Such criminal background checks have records from all states and, as a result, have a greater likelihood of finding a person's criminal past.

Although criminal background checks are often used in employment situations, background screenings to get a full picture of a person are used in many other instances. However, other instances involving criminal background checks often include the purchase of firearms and doing volunteer work for a youth organization.