June 21st, 2022 | Sterling

How to speed up your employee onboarding process

Background checks are a vital part of any onboarding process. They help to ensure that the hiring company is aware of all potential issues with candidates and therefore enable them to make fully informed hiring decisions.

Background checks cover a wide gamut of issues that may affect employment, including criminal background checks, pre-employment screening, reference checks, identity verification, right to work checks, and more.

Most HR teams know that background screening is vital but conducting screening and checks is also often seen as a hindrance and an element that slows down the hiring process. This is because most companies understandably want new employees to start working as soon as possible. Whilst we understand this urge, it’s also important to remember that conducting thorough background screening will in fact help companies to save time and money in the long run as it ensures that all potential issues are flagged and accounted for.

Our one top tip to help companies and HR teams speed up the onboarding process – whilst also ensuring thorough screening and checks are conducted – is to split background screening into two parts: pre-offer checks and post-offer checks.

Many companies are now choosing to conduct two-part checks as it has been found to be much more efficient and effective for all parties involved.

Pre-offer checks

The pre-offer check acts as a filter to remove unsuitable candidates from the pool and therefore make the recruitment process easier and more manageable. This also saves time for candidates as they can be informed of their chances earlier on in the process and continue their job hunt sooner if they are not going to proceed to the next stage of recruitment.

The checks conducted at this point should be critical checks like identity verification, right to work checks, or criminal background checks, as unsatisfactory results in these checks would likely exclude the candidate/s from proceeding to the next stage.

Post-offer checks

Post-offer checks should be reserved for the more nebulous and opinion-based checks, such as education checks and employment screening checks. These checks are more subjective and can therefore be less cut and dry in terms of the standard expected for each role.

These checks also take relatively more time and therefore should be saved for the smaller candidate pool when whittled down to the final few candidates that have high chances of being employed.

By splitting up background screening into two parts, companies can ensure they are hiring the right people and keeping their workplaces safe through thorough background screening while also making the process as efficient as possible. This helps companies keep up with the business demands of getting new employees onboarded and working sooner.

If you have any questions about how to conduct your background screening in a more efficient way, please feel free to reach out to Sterling with questions or concerns; our local screening experts are ready to assist you.

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