Here’s how you can optimize your pre-employment screening policy.
How much does your pre-employment screening policy really help you? We all know it’s meant to weed out undesirable candidates, but how well is it executed? Do you know how to use it for all it’s worth?
Consider the essential elements of an effective pre-employment screening policy:
1. Considers job-related relevance.
There’s a lot of money to be had in hiring candidates with criminal histories and poor credit, so screening companies who immediately weed them out before hiring may be hurting your bottom line. To be truly effective, it’s important to consider the types of jobs a worker will be expected to complete. Are the problems found in their background check relevant? Does every infraction conflict with the company’s work culture? On the flipside, what kinds of backgrounds will present a liability for your business? Identify them and make sure they’re weeded out early on.
2. Quality checks sources.
Background information can be sourced in many places, and some are more accurate than others. Request information on one person from five different places, and you’re likely to find five distinct reports. Some will contain outdated or incorrect information that could rob you of a valuable hire. Even more alarming, other reports will omit information that could cause serious trouble for you down the road. Einstein HR quality checks its pre-employment screening service, ensuring you’re never making important decisions based on bad info.
3. Includes a human element.
Mistakes happen, but sometimes they are very easy to catch with the help of a human eye. If someone is bounced for having too many collections, for instance, and it’s clear the ones listed are all from the same place, it’s important to either re-run the check or discount the problem information. In the same vein, if someone claims they have a professional license and one doesn’t come up in the search, it helps to double-check. The problem may be as simple as a typo.
4. Analyzes existing employees for performance triggers.
Studies show that hiring managers’ decisions are often clouded in bias. They assume someone with a master’s degree is better for a role than someone with a bachelor’s degree or they choose the Ivy Leaguer instead of the person who attended a state program. The problem is that many times those assumptions aren’t accurate, so the wrong person winds up being hired. Pre-employment screening can easily address these issues, even before formal background checks are addressed. Major companies are already doing this. They’re taking all of the data they have on all of their employees, pooling it and analyzing the traits of their best and brightest in every position. Then, they specifically look for candidates with those things in common. Identifying these candidates early on can simply for the interview process and save costs by culling down the competition, when necessary.
5. Trust in the process.
Above all else, a business owner needs to have trust in a screening policy. In order to trust, of course, it has to prove itself effective and needs to be managed by the best people. Einstein HR is an award-winning PEO with the right tools and experience to help you devise an effective and affordable pre-hiring plan. Email your questions regarding pre-employment screening policy to sales@einsteinhr.com or call 770-962-1700 to get more information today.