Hiring new employees – particularly at the executive level – comes down to more than just resumes and a strong interview. Strategic hires can make the difference between contributing to a company’s long-term success and a potentially high turnover rate due to mismatches or unsuitable hires. A national survey conducted by the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) showed that 83 percent respondents screen all full-time employees, while 67 percent screen for part-time employees. Making informed hiring decisions can’t be emphasized enough, but many hiring managers find themselves attempting to navigate a patchwork of federal and state regulations regarding the do’s and don’ts of background checks.
While people typically use DIY background check sites, these platforms, while affordable and readily available, often only scratch the surface of a prospective employee’s background. The basic screenings they provide – think Social Security number traces, address history, employment verification, online criminal check – might be adequate for hourly employees or interns, but what if you’re hiring for a managerial role or higher? More importantly, are these pre-employment checks even accurate? What if a criminal check isn’t online? The services might be cheaper with rapid response times, but you might get what you pay for.
Enter your full-service firm. We want you to think outside the box for what your search can entail and result in. Unlike the fast and affordable cloud-based services, we conduct our research through open sources – a tactic that goes beyond your basic Google search. We run searches against keywords or specific concerns so that you may corroborate the findings from database checks, or even better, discover new information altogether. Our searches result in a comprehensive package that contains accurate findings, and most importantly, are in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
While, yes, technology has become sophisticated in what it can accomplish on behalf of humans, we maximize its capabilities rather than replace human research and analysis. This approach becomes our key differentiator as it removes inaccurate or false positive information from your prospective employee’s search portfolio. As a result? There is less opportunity for findings to slip through the cracks. Rather than give you a piece of the pie, we can deliver you the whole thing.
A tiered approach to services offers multiple packages customized to fit your organization’s budget and pre-employment screening needs.
A Tier I package might provide a soup-to-nuts check on a prospective employee with a competitive turnaround time of 3-5 days. This is a good starting point for any hiring purpose – from staff to manager – and should include federal, state, and county criminal and civil records searches dating back 7-10 years. It’s important that this includes all jurisdictions a candidate may have lived in. Many state and local criminal and civil records are not reported online. This is one of the main challenges with database searches. Additionally, employment verification, education verification, and professional certification searches should be conducted. If you are hiring an Executive that requires more review, then escalate to a Tier II or III package.
By recognizing the importance of deeper background checks for employees that fill roles as an executive, fiduciary, management, or operational specialist, the approach to requests may require customizable services as no two background searches may look alike. While information is sometimes readily available, other times it is limited and requires additional resources or investigative techniques to uncover.
Look for secure platforms for transferring PII
Cloud-based portals offer an easy-to-use and secure tool that allows any authorized representative from your organization to request services through a centralized and secure platform, without the hassle or concern of sending information through emails or any other inefficient communications channel. Things we like to look for include:
1. Accessibility from any location. This is particularly important for remote or disperse hiring teams.
2. An easy and intuitive process for creating a pre-employment background check request. Ideally something you can create in less than 5 minutes.
3. Once completed, a report that summarizes the research and analysis provided. After all, the real value is giving you the final results in a format that you can review quickly.
4. Customer services that is readily available, and even better, a human and not automation.
Conducting enhanced background checks should be an option for your hiring team when you’re screening a candidate. It may not need to be the services for every new hire, but certainly for senior hires, management, partners, or executives.
Voyint specializes in enhanced pre-employment background checks. We creatively combine the latest tools and technologies with subject matter expertise to offer a service beyond instant checks. To learn more, visit our Background Checks page.