The war for talent is incredibly competitive, which means the tools used to attract, engage and onboard candidates should be fast and easy.

One of the tools in the process is the employment background check.

If your company uses an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), and your screening vendor is integrated with this system, this can make it very fast and easy to order background checks.

But what if you don’t have an ATS or your screening vendor is not integrated? In situations where you have to order background checks directly from your screening vendor, what factors can simplify this process for you?

Below, we describe five ways that modern technology is making employment background checks easy.

1) A Web-Based System: Some companies still order background checks the old fashioned way, where they fax or email a background check request to an investigator or a screening company. The vendor then processes the background check and they fax or email the results back to their client. 

This approach is definitely not very user-friendly. You have to obtain written consent, fill out a request form, fax or email the form, wait for the results and then file a paper-based report when the results come back.

Having access to a web-based system greatly simplifies this process by eliminating several steps. In a web-based system, you can quickly order the background check, you get notified by email when the report is complete and the results are accessible to you inside the web based system, which makes the entire process very fast and convenient.

2) Electronic Consent: The web based system is the starting point for convenience, but more modern web-based systems can make the background check process even easier. With electronic consent, you simply login to the web based system, select your bundled screening package from a menu (where all the searches you need are bundled together and process simultanously) and click a button that sends an email to your candidate. The candidate opens the email, reads some instructions and clicks a link. A screen opens in their browser, where they enter the information required to process the background check and they electronically sign their consent form. You receive an email notification when this step is complete and you receive another email notification when the report is finished. This feature eliminates the need to collect a signed consent form from your candidate and reduces the amount of time you spend ordering background checks.

3) Electronic Adverse Action: The adverse action process includes the steps employers are legally obligated to follow if they will be making a decision that is adverse to the applicant or employee’s interests, the most obvious example of which is denying employment. If you follow the legally required steps, it can be somewhat time consuming because it’s a two-stage process that requires sending multiple documents to the candidate. In stage one, you’re supposed to send the candidate three documents: (A) A letter informing them that something was discovered in their background check that might result in the adverse action to be taken. (B) A copy of the Fair Credit Reporting Act Summary of Rights, which is their rights under the law regarding employment background checks. (C) A copy of the completed background check report.

Once you get everything printed, packaged and mailed (with hard copies filed appropriately), you are then required to give them a reasonable amount of time to respond (some courts have held that 5 business days from the day they receive the notice is acceptable) before sending them the final adverse action notice, indicating that the adverse action specified in the letter is being executed.

In a paper-based model, this can be very messy and time consuming. The ideal solution would be to click a button in your web-based screening system and have all three documents in Pre Adverse Action (stage 1) bundled together in a single PDF that gets downloaded to your desktop. Because the law allows you to transmit this information electronically, all you have to do is email this PDF to the candidate.

If you wait five days, you can then login to the web-based screening system, click a button and have the Post Adverse Action Notice (stage 2) downloaded to your desktop as a PDF, which you can also email to the candidate.

Electronic Adverse Action is a huge time saver that eliminates multiple paper-based steps from the entire process and keeps everything neatly stored inside the web-based screening system for future access.

4) Electronic Chain of Custody: The document or paper trail showing the seizure, custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of physical and electronic evidence of a human specimen test is known as “Chain-of-Custody.” In a modern web-based screening system, this entire process is electronic. When you order the drug test in a web-based system equipped with Electronic Chain of Custody, a date-time stamp of when the order was initiated will be recorded in the system. The system will send an email message to the candidate, which contains a drug test registration code and a list of lab locations nearest the candidate’s home or work address. When this email message is sent, a date-time stamp is recorded. Another date-time stamp is recorded when the candidate opens the email, when they arrive at the lab, when they have completed the drug test and when the drug test results have been reported. All of this happens inside the web-based system. And some web-based systems even contain a drug test monitoring feature that allows you to see, in real time, when each of these stages have been met.

Electronic Chain-of-Custody eliminates a complex and time-consuming process of forms and record-keeping. 

5) Random Drug Testing: The more sophisticated web-based screening systems include a feature that fully automates a random drug testing program. You can upload a spreadsheet with your employees’ contact information, select the type of test to be given, select the frequency of testing and select the amount of time between tests. That’s it. The web-based screening system will then implement your random drug testing program by randomly selecting 10% of the people in the spread sheet and electronically recording every step of the process.

These are just some of the ways that technology is making employment background checks easy.

All of the features described here are available inside the SafestHires background screening system. If you want to see our user-friendly interface and see how some of these features can improve your screening situation, please rgeister for a live online demo below.