Hiring decisions are some of the most critical choices your company makes. Background checks are often seen as a method of excluding certain groups from your hiring pool. Here are a few tips for companies to make their hiring process support their diversity and inclusion efforts.
Provide Better Employment Opportunities for Ex-Offenders
Background checks aren’t just a tool to decide who not to hire. They can also be used to determine who your company can employ. When you can run a background check on prospective employees, even if they’re ex-offenders, the results of that background check can shed light on whether the nature of that applicant’s criminal record affects their employability for your company.
Many companies hesitate to hire employees with a criminal record. But depending on the job, that record may not be relevant or concerning. When evaluating the results of background checks, always keep the nature of the job in mind. For instance, somebody should not exclude a person with a driving-while-intoxicated record on their background check for a job that doesn’t involve driving. Similarly, a person with a disorderly conduct conviction from eight years ago should not be restricted from any position, provided they have the requisite skills and qualifications and no history of other offenses. Too often, decision-makers give greater weight to a candidate without any background check blemishes versus an equally qualified candidate with an irrelevant criminal record.
Update HR Policies and Recruitment Practices to Provide More Flexibility
Criminal background checks have increasingly been used in recent years to disqualify job applicants regardless of whether anything in the applicant’s record is relevant to the job. This disproportionately affects members of marginalized communities, particularly people of color and members of the LGBTQ community. That’s because these groups tend to be at a higher risk of incarceration than the general population. Employers should always keep in mind that candidates with a criminal record may perform the job well if given the opportunity.
To prevent this problem, it pays to update HR policies and recruitment policies to reflect the following question: “Do the results of this background check tell us whether or not this applicant can perform the job?” Remember, employers in most states are free to disqualify candidates based on criminal history, but only if the decision is based on a job-related concern – not simply because the applicant has a criminal record.
Provide Diversity Training
Most companies now provide diversity and sensitivity training, but it can be especially vital for hiring managers and HR departments. Hiring managers are human, which means they have biases just like everyone else.
For example, hiring managers often favor candidates who look and act similar to themselves (“similarity attraction”). When faced with a stack of resumes or a handful of candidates and only a few job openings, hiring managers often make quick judgments and rely on gut instinct to make decisions, which usually means relying on biases. Diversity training can help with this.
Hire Staff from Different Backgrounds
Many companies are now implementing diversity hiring programs, but the efficacy of those efforts often begins and ends with who’s doing the hiring. Diversity matters at all company levels, and having multiple perspectives in the room when hiring decisions are being made can help.
As we said, hiring managers often rely on biases and their gut instinct, even if they don’t realize it. Having multiple people in the room making hiring decisions helps mitigate that bias.
Contact us or request a quote today to learn more about how background checks can support your company’s recruiting efforts, contact us or request a quote today.