The Current Hiring Environment

Hiring and retaining employees this year has been challenging to say the least. Employers are facing one of the most historically tight labor markets ever. It was already hard enough to hire people, now add on a tightening economy and spending has become more difficult.

In response, employers are looking for places to cut costs while streamlining their applicant onboarding process. Unfortunately, one of the methods they are looking to accomplish this is by scaling back their background investigations.

Some employers are taking off education, employment, or reference verifications, stating they know people in the industry and can ask around. Others are opting for fewer criminal inquiries since they are satisfied with a National Criminal search. While we understand the need to streamline expenses, we cannot over-stress the importance of not forsaking a quality background investigation. Cutting costs now could result in even greater losses in the future.

Missing Information

As employers eliminate different sections of their investigations, they sacrifice valuable data that would otherwise protect them from hiring someone that wasn’t a good fit. For example, a lot of employers believe that a National Criminal search is the be-all, end-all of criminal searches. However, the name itself is misleading. At CI, we call our “National” criminal search a multijurisdictional instead, because the search is only retrieving information that is available to be pulled into a large searchable database, and does not have consistent coverage throughout the United States.

The main issue with that is the courts do not have any guidelines regarding when they need to update their records. When an employer only does a multijurisdictional, they cannot be sure that the information is up-to-date, it could be two days old, or 18 months old. It all depends on when the court information has been updated. Employers need more than just a multijurisdictional criminal search to be compliant.

Another main section of a background investigation that employers are cutting out is the verifications; primarily education, employment, and references. It’s true, these inquiries take the most time, but eliminating them completely isn’t a viable option either. Education verifications are the most commonly falsified inquiry in a background investigation.

It’s so easy in fact, you can go on Amazon right now and buy a diploma that could look real. Many employers accept these documents at face value and don’t actually verify all the information. Although this will speed up the process at the start, it could lead to major issues for the business later.

Finding a Balanced Solution

Employers need to streamline their applicant process, but none of them really want to completely get rid of their background investigations. There has to be some balance between employer, applicant, and Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA). Partnering with a background investigation professional will allow you to continue to receive high-quality data on your applicants in a reasonable time.

No one wants to lose applicants because their process took too long, but they want trusted people working for them too. Don’t sacrifice the quality of your background investigation for speed. Partner with a professional that will help you make better informed hiring decisions in a timely manner.