Background Screening Impacts the Candidate Experience
(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by our friends at HireRight, a leader in global background checks, drug testing, and employment verification services. More than 70 percent of the Fortune 100 use HireRight for their employment screening needs. Did you know that HireRight offers an extensive resource library with case studies and checklists? You can check it out here. Enjoy the post!)
While the face-to-face interview is a part of the candidate experience, it’s not the entire experience. The candidate experience includes employment branding, career portals, offer letters, etc. It even includes other steps in the overall hiring process, like background screening, where organizations might leverage third-party service providers. Every touchpoint in the hiring process is a part of the candidate experience.
A recent Harvard Business Review article pointed out the shift that’s taken place: power has shifted from employers to candidates. And businesses are feeling the impact. In HireRight’s 2015 Employment Screening Benchmark Report, 51 percent of organizations said that finding and retaining talent was their top business challenge.
The last thing an organization wants is to not be able to innovate the next big thing or not win a piece of business because they don’t have the talent.
That’s why the candidate experience is important. Organizations understand that a positive candidate experience will yield the best talent. They also understand that the term candidate experience extends beyond interviewing to all aspects of the recruiting cycle, including background screening. In the same HireRight report, 25 percent said improving the candidate experience was their top recruiting challenge.
There are a couple of reasons improving the candidate experience might seem overwhelming. If we look at only the background screening piece:
New staffing strategies require a new approach to the background screening process. We know the value background screening creates in more consistent organizational safety, improved compliance and (most importantly) better quality of hire. However there’s a disconnect between background screening for regular staff and contingent workers. According to the report, 82 percent of organizations do some sort of background screening on “regular” staff, contingent workers are not screened at the same level. As organization’s tap into contingent workers as part of their recruiting strategy, they also need to evaluate how contingent workers are hired, trained, engaged, and retained. That includes if and how they are background checked.
Our organizations are filled with global workers. Today’s employees are truly borderless. They have obtained a global education, worked for global employers and managed global assignments. This means a vast majority of background checks have a global component. We want those global candidates to become our employees. Their experience and expertise brings value. And yet, according to the report, only 15 percent of respondents conduct global verifications.
These are just two examples of how rapidly the employment process is changing and its impact on the candidate experience. As human resources professionals, it’s important to stay on top of these trends. We can’t afford to have ineffective and inefficient processes negatively impacting the candidate experience.
So how do we do that? By sharing our expertise! Participate in HireRight’s annual employment screening benchmarking survey. Don’t say, “I’m too busy and don’t have the time.” The survey takes 10 minutes. As a thank you for participating, respondents can enter to win one of five $100 American Express gift cards and, in early 2016, will get a copy of the survey findings and an invitation from HireRight to a webinar where the findings are discussed.
If you’re not already doing it, in the not too distant future, we will be sitting around tables sharing strategies to improve the candidate experience and find the best talent. Taking a 10 minute survey to stay on top of what’s happening is a small investment of time. Don’t delay – the survey is only open until Friday, September 25.
The talent wars have begun. As HR pros, we’re going to need all the resources we can get.
0