Conducting background checks is necessary because it helps ensure the candidate you’re hiring isn’t a high-risk individual, leading to turnover or, worst, causing direct financial loss. One problem you may face is the time it takes to complete the process. However, there are several ways of optimizing your background checks for efficiency and accuracy.
We have been operating in this industry for several years, allowing us to become experts in this area of recruitment. Therefore, we have mentioned several tips in this blog to help you conduct recruitment more efficiently through your background check choices.
5 Tips for Optimizing Your Background Checks
Following are the most effective ways for optimizing your background checks:
1. Follow Federal Guidelines
While it is essential to know more about the candidate you are hiring, there should be limitations to the data you are gathering. Several employers became invasive when confirming candidate credibility, leading to federal government publishing guidelines to protect citizens.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has published guidance when conducting background checks and criminal records research. While it is appropriate to conduct background checks to determine if a candidate is a good fit, they must not be utilized in a manner that denies equal employment opportunity to anyone in a protected class, by intent, or by unlawful disparate impact.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) addresses the legality of background checks and provides guidelines for employers to follow. Complying with these guidelines will help you identify the elements to focus on, reducing the total time it would take to conduct a background check.
2. Request Information about Relevant Details
You don’t need to know how a person manages their finances if you recruit them for marketing or operations. Getting unnecessary information is a waste of time and resources and will further confuse you when you analyze it to make the final decision. For specific jobs in accounting, finance, or IT, a credit report may be required to ensure that a candidate is not under financial stress. Given these types of jobs have access to sensitive data (e.g., IT) or financial assets (e.g., accounting and finance), employers need to be wary that a potentially stressed employee is not in a position to relieve their hardships by defaulting the business.
Learn to identify the relevant elements that will affect their performance in the role you’ve recruited them for and access only relevant background information.
3. Don’t Focus Extensively on Criminal Record
It is vital to get details on a candidate’s criminal record for safety purposes, but don’t focus on it excessively. You should only let a criminal record affect the hiring based on:
(1) the nature and seriousness of the offense;
(2) the time that passed since the applicant’s conviction and/or the completion of the individual’s sentence; and
(3) the nature of the job held or sought, specifically, how the conviction and related behavior impact the job or safety of others at the organization.
Criminal records can easily create bias in hiring and elongate the process. Therefore, make it a policy not to let them affect hiring without considering the abovementioned criteria.
4. Integrate Background Checks from the Beginning
Optimizing your background checks is simple when you integrate them from the beginning of the recruitment process. They help narrow down the list of candidates more quickly with the initial phase of findings; hence, leaving a more manageable list at the end to focus on. Consider separating the background check into two parts, with the first involving an identity verification and employment history, education, and reference checks. Provided these checks are good, the second part could include criminal records research, driving history checks, and credit report (if applicable).
5. Choose an Experienced Partner for Conducting Background Checks
Above all, you need an experienced partner conducting background checks for your recruitment process. First Contact HR has been a leader in the background screening industry for several years. We leverage our expertise to provide you with efficient and accurate background checks for recruitment.
Final Thoughts
In short, optimizing your background checks requires you to follow guidelines, focus on what’s essential, seamless integration, and work with experts. If you want to learn more about our background check procedures, please contact our team. We look forward to working with you.