Make Background Screening a Priority in 2023

This post was provided by Adam Miner of Verified First.

Investing in your candidate pipeline and retention strategy is a must if you want to keep up with industry trends in 2023. According to Aptitude Research’s 2022 Talent Acquisition Technology Buyer’s Guide, organizations that utilize background screening solutions significantly improve the candidate experience and overall retention of talent over organizations that don’t utilize screening.

That being said, prioritizing background screening can make or break how your organization begins the new year. Our friends at Verified First want to help you reach your hiring potential in 2023 and have provided a rundown of the importance of prioritizing background screening in 2023.

Background Screening Protects Your Organization

Even after the interview process, you can’t really know a new hire until they walk through your doors. Background screening reduces that uncertainty by giving you a glimpse into a person’s personal and professional history before they’re officially onboarded.

When you choose to screen candidates and applicants, you uncover more about who a person is both inside and outside of the office. Background checks can help you identify applicants who aren’t a good fit for your organization or those who may even put your existing employees and organization at risk. Some examples of these types of screens are:

• Criminal background checks - a multi-jurisdictional database search comprising millions of records from county and state administrative courts, departments of corrections, and third-party sex-offender databases.
• Verifications - verifies applicant history prior to hiring, including employment verifications, Department of Transportation (DOT), education verifications, personal and professional references, and professional license verifications.
• Identity checks - identifies the state and approximate year of where and when a social security number (SSN) was issued.

Background Screening Ensures Quality

In the past few years, there’s been a shift in the talent landscape, affecting nearly all organizations and industries. HR and Talent Acquisition (TA) professionals have had to get creative with their recruitment strategies in order to attract top talent. According to LinkedIn, 76% of hiring managers surveyed in 2022 said that attracting quality candidates for the job was their biggest challenge.

Background screening can help you navigate the hiring process by identifying quality talent from the start. Background checks offer a comprehensive look into a candidate’s past to help you decide if an applicant is a good fit for your open role. By screening your applicants, you learn about a candidate’s:

• Earned degrees from institutions
• Previous employment history
• Accredited certifications

Identifying this information through screening enables you to better understand if the person you’re interviewing has what it takes for the job, making it easy to move forward in the hiring process.

Background Screening Can Improve the Candidate Experience

Background screening doesn’t have to be an extra task on HR’s to-do list. In fact, utilizing a background screening provider can even help you prioritize the candidate experience.

Part of making a difference in today’s hiring market means finding a screening provider, or as Verified First likes to say, a screening partner. Screening partners will work alongside your organization and assist in the hiring process by improving aspects of communication with your applicants.

According to Aptitude Research’s 2022 Talent Acquisition Technology Buyer’s Guide, a good screening partner will streamline the hiring process while also improving the overall candidate experience. Screening partners can:

• Utilize candidate texting - Candidates will receive texts in order to initiate background screens and offer updates on the screening process.
• Send assessments through mobile devices - Candidates can fill out all information from their phones once they receive a message from the screening provider.
• Offer opportunities for feedback - Candidates are sent forms or other ways of gathering candidate feedback on the screening process that they can fill out from anywhere.

Build Your Best Team

Prioritizing background screening can help you start off 2023 on the right foot. Background screening can help you build the best team for your organization the first time around. For more information on Verified First’s partnership with Ceipal, check out our partner page.