Headed on a road trip or venturing to a new restaurant across town? Chances are, you’ll call up an app like Google Maps to help you navigate.
But what if you’re an HR pro or recruiter and need to obtain the best background check on a likely new hire—how do you get there?
Technology can help! Like a GPS for your screening efforts, smart technology can help you find your way to a quick, comprehensive, and candidate-friendly background check. Still, there will be times when you need to (metaphorically speaking) pull over and ask for directions from someone with local knowledge, so people matter to this process, too.
A Central Role for Technology
For a long time, background checks involved clunky systems, lots of manual processes, and a heavy burden on hiring teams. As background screenings became increasingly recognized as an essential part of the onboarding process—helping to improve workplace safety, protect reputation, and enhance candidate quality—managing all the moving pieces has required more and more effort.
Today, individuals leading the hiring charge need a complete start-to-hire solution. The tech should make the process streamlined for teams, enjoyable for candidates, automated where it counts, and reliably compliant throughout.
What does that mean in practice? Among the features to look for are things like:
- Integration with the ATS software the team already uses, so background screenings dovetail with other processes.
- Automation of routine tasks, such as identifying which reports may need extra review, to help HR professionals to manage their roles more efficiently.
- Intelligent search recommendations to home in on the most time- and cost-efficient yet comprehensive background check for each candidate’s unique background.
- Convenient, web-based tools for candidate-facing tasks, like authorizing the background search and pre-adverse and adverse action notifications.
- An end-to-end compliance solution that automatically verifies that records that are returned are reportable under applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations.
A last criterion for a superior provider is as much attitude as feature—a commitment to innovation. As the emergence of ChatGPT has underscored, technology tends to progress in leaps and bounds. To make the most of it, you’ll need a partner who keeps track of new technological capabilities and applies key advances to background screenings.
The People Part of the Equation
As helpful as technology can be, hiring and onboarding is always about people. In an evolving workplace with continually changing expectations, new background check needs and unique cases are bound to arise.
That’s why the second part of any effective background check solution must be human.
Seek out providers supplying ready access to professionals who know the ins and outs of background checks and how to adapt and customize them to varying needs. Your selected partner should have—on staff—experts in compliance, drug testing options, professional reference and licensing checks, and other necessities in today’s background screening environment. These people will be your resources.
As with any decision, there are more details worth diving into. But if you get the core combination of technology and people right, your background check experience and hiring success will be transformed.