6 Tips to Improve Your Hiring Timeline

1. Create a Hiring Process

Every company should have a strategic well thought out hiring process.  Where does it starts? With talent acquisition, recruitment, staffing, how are you employers acquiring viable job applicants?  Larger businesses may find that temporary staffing is a good solution for their hiring need, even employing a talent acquisition professional.   Smaller businesses may just use online job posting services matching applicants with certain criteria.

2. Create a Hiring Policy

In order to deter claims of discrimination and follow best practices in the hiring process. A well thought out Hiring Policy should be drafted.  The policy will address these main topics:

• Purpose of Policy – States why the organization conducts background checks.
• Scope of Policy – Employment screening policies should be designed to protect property and people your employees will come in contact with.
• Responsible Organization – Which department will be implementing and managing the policy.
• Sensitive Positions – Identify each position within the organization.
• Hiring Mangers Responsibility – Individualized assessment with each candidate in order to determine suitability for employment.
• Retention Records – All employee records should be stored until that employee is terminated.
• Legal Compliance – Ensure that the company abides by all Federal and State laws.

3. Have your Background Check provider on retainer

As soon as a conditional job offer has been made then it’s time to engage your background screening provider.  Majority of companies are moving to an Applicant Tracking System that will capture applicant information from one source during the application phase and store all pertinent information.  Therefore, select a background screening provider that has technology to integrate both the employers ATS and the background screening providers online software platform.  This will expedite the process in gathering authorization and provided notices to the candidate.

4. Online Paperless Process

Technology has allowed for all state and federal notices along with the candidates authorization and consent to be done electronically.  Gone are the days of printing numerous notices and determining what the candidates receive as oppose to what signature the employer must gather.  Additional implementing an online consent feature will greatly improve the overall process by:

• Reduce turnaround time of results
• Eliminate errors on reports to ensure maximum accuracy
• Immediate uploading of applicant information to a secure online portal
• All federal and state compliance notices provided online (completely paperless process)

5. Ask the right questions during the interview.

Currently the landscape in employment hiring is moving towards prohibiting employers from inquiring about a candidates past criminal activity on an employment application, to delaying until the interview has taken place.  This philosophy is also known as “Ban the Box” it’s sweeping across the US and will soon affect every public/private employer.

Therefore, it crucial to be prepared for the candidate interview, this is where employers will have an opportunity to inquire about past criminal behavior that could potentially impact their employment.  Allow the candidate to be completely transparent and document everything!

6. On-site Drug Testing

Technology has also improved the drug screening portion of the hiring process.  Before employers would need hard copy chain of custody forms in order to send candidate to the local clinic for urine drug screening.  Today, majority of employment background screening firms provide onsite drug testing/collection that will provide instant results for the employer.  The employer has two options, the first is to have personnel collect the urine by providing an “ecup” to the candidate and determining if the test is positive or negative based on the indicator located on the ecup.  The second option is to engage a nationwide or regional drug screening provider that can facilitate the process for the employer onsite.

View our Webinar: “How Employment Applications Affect Background Checks”