Advancements in technology have made recruiting much more competitive these days, which has employers racing against the clock to get people hired before they accept a position elsewhere. To help companies meet their hiring goals, SafestHires has created the fastest & easiest background screening solution for Staffing and HR.
Before we pull the covers back and reveal some of the ways that we help accellerate the screening process, let’s quickly review some elements of a background check and describe what factors can affect turnaround time.
The Disclosure & Authorization Form: Before a background check can be ordered, the employer must notify the candidate that a background check will be conducted and obtain the candidate’s written authorization to do so. This is done with a Disclosure & Authorization form. Many employers will provide this form to a candidate in person, but delays can happen when they have to email it to the candidate and the candidate has to print it, sign it, scan it and email it back.
The County Criminal Search: This search will reveal if a person has any criminal records on file at the county courthouse in the county or counties where the candidate has lived. Their residential address history is revealed with an instant search, called the Social Security Trace & Address History Search. The screening system then executes a criminal record search in the counties where they candidate has lived. Typically, a court researcher (an actual person) is dispatched to the county courthouse, where they run a search in the court system to discover criminal records. Things that can impact turnaround time include how far the researcher must drive; if the courthouse is paper-based or digital; the days & hours that the courthouse is open to process requests; if the courthouse has a large staff or small staff; and how many requests are being processed by the courthouse at any given time.
Verifications: Any type of verification – for past employment, education or licenses – can slow down the screening process. What happens with this search is that the information is assigned to a verifications team and they initiate contact. If a verification specialist must reach a person, this is where delays can begin. Things that can impact turnaround time start with having the correct contact information. If the organization doesn’t exist or the contact person has moved on or if the candidate never worked for an employer because they worked there on assignment from a staffing agency or consulting firm, this can create delays. Even if all the information was correctly entered, your screening vendor will only contact the person once per day. If the person is out at that time of day or just inundated with other verification requests, it may take the person time to return a call or email.
Drug Testing: If you are putting your candidate through a traditional lab-based drug test, equipping them with the necessary paperwork can slow down the process. This paperwork is called “Chain-of-Custody” and represents the paper trail showing the seizure, custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of a human specimen test.
So what kinds of things have we done to accellerate the screening process?
The Disclosure & Authorization Form: One of the most popular tools we offer is the Electronic Disclosure & Authorization form. A user logs into our system, selects their package from a menu and then enters the candidate’s name & email address and clicks “send.”
The candidate opens the email, reads some instructions and clicks a link. A screen opens in their browser, and the first thing they see is their Disclosure & Authorization form. The read it, then enter the required information for the searches, add their electronic signature and that’s it. The client is notified by email when this step is complete and then they are notified once again when the report is finished. Easy peasy.
The County Criminal Search: Out of the nation’s 3,200 county courts, our system is integrated with approximately 1,100. This helps speed up our average turnaround time on county criminal searches considerably. Our average turnaround time on a county criminal search is 9 hours.
Verifications: There are third-party verification services that many employers and colleges/universities use to verify past employment or education. Not all employers or colleges/universities require the use of these service to verify past employment or education, but this is becoming increasing popular. Our system is electronically integrated with these services, which measurably speeds up our turnaround time on verifications.
Drug Testing: Our system is electronically integrated with labs, which eliminates the need for paper forms and replaces these with electronic chain of custody. When a drug test is ordered, it gets date/time stamped in our system and then every step is tracked electronically. Moreover, the candidate receives an email from us with a registration code and list of lab locations closest to their home address so they can quickly and easily go to the lab and take their drug test.
In addition to all of this, we have built the cleanest, easiest and most modern user-interface, we’ve made the Adverse Action process extremely easy to execute and we offer many other tools and features that makes SafestHires the fastest & easiest background screening solution for Staffing & HR.
If you’d like to see our system with a live demo, please register using the link below.
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