Optimizing Your Candidate Experience With Efficient Background Screening

When you’re wrapped up in the commotion of recruitment, it can be easy to forget that hiring is a two-way street: organizations interview candidates and candidates examine potential companies, too. If you only start thinking about your employees’ experiences after they are hired, you’re likely too late. HR and talent teams should prioritize the employee experience from the very first touchpoint: the hiring process. 

That begins by creating a seamless, easy-to-understand, and transparent process from application to onboarding and beyond. Creating an efficient background screening program is the simplest way to optimize your candidate experience. In this article, you’ll learn: 

• The importance of seamless onboarding and how it impacts the candidate experience
• Ways to optimize your candidate experience with efficient background screening

Background Screening and Onboarding

When a candidate has a positive onboarding experience, they are more likely to confidently accept your offer. But did you know that almost half of job seekers (49%) have actually turned down a job offer due to a bad recruitment experience? 

And when a candidate has multiple job prospects, they will likely turn down a company with a negative recruitment experience and select another role. Plus, with countless platforms such as GlassDoor and Indeed, applicants with an unpleasant experience are more likely to share their stories and potentially impact future applicants looking at your company. 

Background checks play a critical role in every organization’s hiring process. A seamless and efficient background screening program helps establish the groundwork for and increase the chances of a successful onboarding experience. 

Let’s explore four ways to optimize your candidate experience through efficient background screening. 

Optimizing the Candidate Experience with Background Screening

Job seekers value communication and transparency. Oftentimes, pre-employment screening is one of the most intimidating and least understood portions of the hiring process. Regardless of the type of background screening you perform, the technology you utilize, and the markets that your organization hires in, these screening considerations can help improve your candidate experience. 

Provide Clear Communication

The employment and hiring process is likely part of your everyday routine. However, this can be something new for applicants. One way to enhance the candidate experience is by providing clear, specific communication throughout the screening process. 

This includes a realistic timeline of the onboarding process, the scope of your organization’s background screening process, what is required of candidates for a background check, and any updates to their application status. By explicitly communicating this information upfront, your candidates will be better prepared to navigate the process quickly, trust your organization’s methods and decision-making, and therefore improve their experience. 

Pro-Tip: Clearly define your background screening process, including what each step entails, expected timelines, and necessary documents/information needed from the candidate. You can share this information with candidates to help guide them through the recruitment process. 

Create a Timely Process

In competitive markets, time is of the essence. You don’t want to lose your top candidate to another opportunity because your hiring process or background check is taking too long, and vice versa! That’s why it’s important to create a timely process with realistic turnaround times. 

Some employers try to reduce their time to fill by skipping a background check, but that’s not guaranteed to actually shorten your overall hiring process. The key to a timely screening process is balancing speed and accuracy when conducting background checks. 

Partnering with an experienced background screening provider can shorten your hiring process and improve turnaround times by identifying and vetting qualified candidates quickly. When you screen with Verified First, the average turnaround time is almost 9x faster. 

Stay Compliant with Screening Guidelines

Running compliant background checks not only helps protect your organization and mitigate risk, but it also improves your overall turnaround time and the candidate experience. How? Let’s take a look at the three ways compliant background screening can help your organization: 

1. Mitigates Risk: Negligent hiring lawsuits can cost your organization time, money, and reputational damage. Compliant background checks reduce your risk and show potential applicants your commitment to compliance and transparency. 
2. Builds Trust: People are worried about their data. By safeguarding applicant data with compliant screening practices, you build trust with candidates and the community. If applicants can trust you with their data, they are more likely to trust your organization as a whole. 
3. Improves Quality of Hire + Time to Fill: Without proper and compliant background screening, you run the risk of hiring unqualified candidates that you spend too much time training or ultimately let go. This puts you back at square one. Using efficient screening from the start will allow you to find more qualified candidates, faster while saving you time and money. 

Partner With a Screening Provider

Recruiting and hiring top talent is challenging enough without the right tools in place to support your goals. Partnering with a background screening provider that integrates with your chosen applicant tracking system (ATS), can help you alleviate the manual work on your team’s plate, improve efficiency and accuracy, and ultimately optimize your candidate experience.

Screening Made Simple with Verified First and BreezyHR

By now, you should understand that the candidate experience starts long before someone becomes an employee. A positive, efficient onboarding process paired with a smooth and stress-free background check is crucial to creating the best candidate experience your organization can. 

Clear communication and transparency paired with the right technology can help you achieve this synergy and offer a streamlined candidate experience from the start. Verified First and BreezyHR can help your organization facilitate stress-free screening, stay compliant, and better optimize your recruiting and onboarding processes. 

With this one-click integration, Breezy users can easily order, track, and manage Verified First's background screening solutions, including background checks and verifications, within Breezy's ATS platform.

Start optimizing your candidate experience today!