Employers today nearly always perform some sort of background screening on applicants prior to hiring. Between trying to remain compliant with rapidly new and changing Federal and State regulations, and tackling inaccurate information provided by over half of all applicants on their resumes (Source: Society of Human Resources Management, 2003), Human Resources departments have no choice but to background screen applicants. However, even with the best of intentions, many employers fail to put together an adequate solution and use screening to their advantage.
When putting together a custom solution based on your organizational needs, and the different roles you may be staffing there are certain steps you can take to ensure you are receiving the maximum benefit from your screening efforts.
Define the information you need to collect and verify for the positions you are staffing. There are numerous background checks available to you, each providing different information about your applicants’ past.
- Identity and Credit checks can give you basic information you need; confirming identity, right-to-work status, and credit history
- Driving Record searches can provide you any citation and violations in an applicant’s past, as well as more specific CDLIS information if you need to comply with FMCSA requirements.
- Criminal Record Searches could obviously provide valuable insight into an applicant’s past.
- References and credentialing can verify education, employment history, professional licenses, military service, etc. and match it against claims made on resumes.
- Clinical Services can offer not only substance abuse testing, but various medical screens and health services.
There are many other options available to you as well. See our list of screening services here to get an idea of what you can use for your needs.
When building your screening program, utilizing a background screening company will help you improve your current process, and more often than not, lower your cost of hire, and improve your quality of hire. A third party screening company will also help you maintain compliance with laws and regulations, which can protect you from expensive fines. Background screening companies employ experts in compliance, who are tasked with staying up to date on all laws and regulations and keeping clients educated.
Another thing you should be thinking about is centralizing your solution. Finding one program that can serve as a platform for all your various background screens will help you in both running the checks themselves, as well as storing them in one easy to access location you can log in to and view. Check out our ACTivate Platform to learn more about our single sign-on platform.
Finally, make sure you are designing a program that integrates easily with your existing HR applications. Whether you have a well known ATS/HRIS system or a proprietary homegrown system, finding a program provider that can integrate with your workflow is key when designing the best possible solution. Such integrations will reduce entry time and redundancy, and give you one easy to access platform for ordering services.
If you are interested in learning more about best practices in background screening, download our free 23 page 2014 Applicant Screening Guide here, or contact us for a free consultation and live demo of our ACTivate platform.