Ways to Screen Employees Before They Are Hired

Tips for Effective and Compliant Employee Screening

A background check for employment is something that every company should do during the recruitment process. With employment background screening, you can verify the accuracy of the information a prospect supplies to ensure they have the necessary qualifications for the job.

CNBC reports that 78% of candidates who applied for or received a job offer in 2019 admit they did or would consider lying on their resumes. Candidates falsify their resumes to improve their chances of getting the job and cover a lack of job experience. This could translate into low quality of work, substandard customer feedback, and terrible teamwork skills, directly affecting your company’s bottom line. 

By performing a screening process for hiring, you can eliminate all these risks and ensure that you adhere to your organization or industry’s rules, thereby avoiding potential penalties and fines. This article will take a comprehensive look at essential tips you should implement to achieve an effective and compliant screening process. 

1. Establish a Consistent Screening Policy

The initial step to creating a cost-effective and compliant employee screening process is establishing a consistent screening policy to guide the organization. A well-designed employment screening policy will bring efficiency and consistency into the recruitment process, ultimately lowering hiring risks, preventing litigation, and trimming operating costs. 

Your screening policy should define the scope and purpose of the background screening policy and describe guidelines and legal parameters to be followed in the process. It should also outline the specific approach to use in conducting background checks. You also need to ensure that the policy is consistently applied across all individuals to ensure that it adheres to anti-discrimination regulations and other regulated laws. 

2. Validate Previous Employment

Confirming a job candidate’s previous work experience allows you to throw light on their personality, experience, skill level, work ethic, and knowledge in the workplace. As mentioned, candidates are prone to lying or exaggerating on their resumes to make themselves look good on paper. 

With an employment verification process, you can certify that the candidates’ listed work experiences are adequate and valid while simultaneously providing you with reasons they left their previous positions. 

Use professional background check software to streamline the verification process and organize the data collected from previous employers for easier decision-making. Before conducting verification, you need to obtain permission from a candidate to make the process legal. If candidates deny permission to contact previous employers, ask them to provide documentation such as W-2 forms or payslips to prove their employment. 

3. Adhere to Law and Credit Checks

Pulling credit reports for all types of jobs allows your organization to avoid embezzlement or theft and assess their trustworthiness. It gives you a clear picture of how a potential candidate handles their responsibilities, ensuring they perform to the best of their abilities. However, performing credit checks are relatively tricky because it is covered under federal laws. 

When conducting credit checks, follow the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which requires that you receive consent from a job applicant before evaluating a credit report. You may also be required to provide official notice of adverse action if you opt not to hire a candidate based on data in a credit assessment. 

4. Verify Accreditation and Educational Background

Pre-screening and verifying the educational backgrounds of potential candidates provide you with the foundational indication of their ability to do the job. With the rapid growth of diploma mills, it is increasingly easy for applicants to acquire fake degrees and misleading credentials. 

Conducting an in-depth educational background check allows you to get legitimate data about the institution the candidate attended, their dates of graduation or attendance, major, certifications, accreditations, and diplomas earned.

It can be helpful in cases where specific professional licenses or academic credentials are critical to perform a job. Verified certifications and licenses also ensure your organization won’t suffer liability issues in fields that require compliance with industry laws and regulations. You can hire employment background check companies to confirm the academic information listed on job applications and resumes are accurate to speed up the screening process. 

5. Use Applicant Tracking Systems

Using applicant tracking systems drives an efficient screening process because it allows you to implement more agile and streamlined processes that enable recruiters to find and engage the right talent. This is how an applicant tracking software helps recruiters in hiring and talent acquisition activities, making it easier to rank resumes according to qualification indicators. 

An ATS is also equipped with several employee screening solutions like automated resume parsing and screening, recruiting analytics, and searchable databases intended to achieve various recruitment goals. It also allows you to submit feedback about a candidate and collaborate with your colleagues through mobile for a comprehensive hiring process. 

Screening Employees Effectively

An effective employee screening process is a collaborative effort. It requires human resource teams, executives, and other departments to work conjointly and share feedback during the recruitment process so that you can adequately evaluate each candidate. You can start a collaborative hiring process by using feedback and reviews management software to compare and assess candidates’ skills and cut down your time to hire. 

VITAY is a dynamic reference checking solution that empowers recruiters to acquire more insights into the candidate’s performance while simultaneously bypassing the administrative work that comes with manually collecting information. It also provides comprehensive datasets and feedback using multi-reference analytics that can be exported as full-reference reports via PDF. VITAY offers three pricing packages, namely the Starter, Professional, and the quote-based Enterprise plan.

Check out more about VITAY or leave a comment below.

---