Steps You Need to Take to Ensure You get the Right Contractor

You'll find the services of a trustworthy, professional contractor indispensable if you are building a house or planning an extensive repair of an existing one. You need a reputable, legitimate, honest, and responsible person who's easy to work with.   

Signs of a Reliable Contractor

• Clean record, within reason
• Responsive and punctual
• Listens to your ideas
• Written contracts with work agreements
• Provides written estimates

Signs of an Unreliable Contractor

• Avoids permits, zoning, and building codes
• License abnormalities
• Lawsuits against the contractor
• Speaks poorly of clients or associates
• Habitually late or doesn't return calls

Be Clear on Your Project  

Make sure you've ironed out your project details before you even start looking for a contractor. Different people have different areas of experience or interest that will emerge when you look at photos of their work, their portfolios, and before-and-after images. 

Should You do a Background Check? 

Hiring a contractor comes with some risk, just as hiring anyone, for that matter, and this risk is easy to mitigate by partnering with a third party to perform a background check. 

The screening process doesn't need to be complicated, time-consuming, or expensive. Maintaining safety at your workplace or home is paramount. 

Key Screening Points 

There are several points to keep in mind when screening conditional workers. One of them is to define background check requirements according to their role. If you are a business owner, you should hold your contractors up to the same standards as your full-time staff. They will likely have similar access to other employees, facilities, and clients. 

Companies are more familiar with their regular staff than with contractors. In some cases, businesses employ contractors with the option to hire them full-time at one point. 

Where to Begin?

Your background check should begin with a criminal record search. You could check if the offender registry in your state has a match on their name. If they have lived or worked in more than one state, you should check more than one registry. You could search criminal history databases in more than one jurisdiction as well. 

You can hire a service or do this yourself if you have time. Ask them for their Social Security number to search county and district records. Check the records in the different counties where they have worked, if possible. 

Drug testing might be necessary if they will be performing a safety-sensitive job. A credit history check might be a good idea for a financially sensitive position. Check their driving history if they have to drive for your job. Verify any professional licenses.   

Ask for Their Consent 

You must have your prospective contractor's consent before you do any background check on them. Only social media and a Google search are exceptions, and not always. You also can't use these findings to make a hiring decision. 

While a clean background isn't a guarantee your cooperation with the contractor will be successful, the type of contract is critical. It should include penalties for subpar performance or non-performance, clarified in detail. Once the contract is terminated, you shouldn't be liable for compensation due to failures on the contractor's part. 

Document the work in writing as you go along. If they don't meet your expectations, written information will help you. Prepare a list if you establish multiple violations and send a letter to the contractor's mailing address with a return receipt. Inform them that they have to remedy the issues, and failure to do that is a breach of contract. If they don't take any measures, you can warn you'll end the contract as a last resort.