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You’ve probably heard of DBS checks, and know that this is a type of police check carried out to make sure that people who have a serious criminal past can’t get jobs working with children or vulnerable adults. DBS stands for Disclosure and Barring Service, and although the “disclosure” part of the title is about the police record searches, what is less understood is the “barring” part of the title.

If you’re working in an occupation which requires you to be checked by the Police before starting, this system will be explained to you when you apply for the job. This checking process used to be called a CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) check and is now DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service).

If you’ve ever locked yourself out of your home in the middle of the night, you’ll know what a valuable service is provided by a locksmith. They turn up at all hours, and can either replace the locks on your property or help you break in. Setting yourself up as a locksmith can be lucrative, especially if you’re prepared to offer a 24 hour service to your customers.

There an estimated 10 million adults living in the UK who have a criminal record. The number of unemployed people in the UK is only around 1.47 million though, so it’s safe to assume that there are 8.5 million people working every day in the UK with a criminal record.

It’s one of those phrases you often hear trotted out when discussing DBS checks, PVG checks in Scotland or AccessNI checks in Northern Ireland – “children and vulnerable adults”. It’s easy to define clearly what a child is, and in the UK the accepted definition is anyone under the age of 18.

If applying for new jobs wasn’t stressful and confusing enough, the recruitment industry loves to throw jargon and abbreviations into the mix. CRB, DBS, PVG, CPD, NMW – it’s all very confusing. Even if you’re up to date with the lingo – or have found out that NMW means National Minimum Wage courtesy of a search engine – there are a few acronyms which cause confusion.