The job interview remains the most critical aspect of making a new hire, but for some guaranteed transparency you'll need an employee background check. These remain the best way to confirm a candidate's resume as well as begin validating more than just their employment history. And human resource (HR) professionals seem to agree since a survey conducted by HR.com on behalf of the Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA) found that 96 percent of responding businesses stated that they conduct one or more types of pre-employment background screening. However, the complexity surrounding the use of background checks has increased as adoption has gone up.

A big part of that complexity is figuring out what exactly comprises an effective screening process. Both the process and the components of a check are continuing to evolve, which is a trend we saw across all six of the employment background check service providers we reviewed in this roundup. The need for specialized and more nuanced background check solutions varies, so finding one that suits a businesses’ needs can be a challenge since not all of these services are created equally.

What Is An Employee Background Checking Service?

An employment background check service is exactly what the name implies: it's typically a web-based service that offers employers, and sometimes consumers, the ability to check a variety of different, public databases for background data on designated individuals. The data these services access is almost always publicly available, so the value they're offering is in convenience, breadth of data access, and ability to parse that data effectively so you can use it to make a hiring decision. All that's offered for a price, which is typically calculated per report, though there are other pricing methods.

The majority of background check services are standalone. Businesses will access them whenever they want to run a report. Some, however, are offered as part of a larger integrated HR software solution that makes the feature available for an added cost. Others specialize mainly in the data portion and provide application programming interface (API) that developers can use to more seamlessly build background check integration into their specific in-house solutions, existing third-party human resources (HR) systems, or other relevant software. HR departments often rely on multiple services to produce a more balanced or insightful candidate profile. Engaging multiple services, however, can soon become expensive and redundant if they generate much of the same background data.

While conducting a screening is usually just a matter of setting up an account with a service and inputting some key data points, HR managers should refrain from simply jumping in and running scans. Employers and third-party companies that provide these services to HR managers must adhere to certain laws, which vary from state to state as well as between counties and even municipalities. This means, before obtaining and reviewing any report for the purpose of hiring new employees, be sure you're clear on the laws for your state and that of any third-party participants, too.

If you have a legal department, then it's a good idea to run through this with them before starting your screening process. As an employer, you are required to get an applicant's written consent before getting any reports. Your applicants have the right to all of those records, can dispute inaccuracies, and seek damages from companies that violate their rights or discriminate against them. Good employment background check services provide a means for their clients to comply with this requirement, so verify that before making a decision.

The Different Kinds of Background Checks

The eager HR manager can choose from several different types of background checks, including credit checks, employment history verification, drug tests, driving and criminal records, and certainly academic history verification. A new development centers on social media searches, and this has become a hotly debated topic among HR professionals and employment background check services. That's primarily because these screening processes tend to wind up containing information about which potential employers aren't allowed to ask an applicant straight out: things such as sexual orientation, political affiliations, religious background and similar data. Aside from ethical issues, social media background checks don't directly inform employers on a potential candidate's work history and could color decisions based on a number of biases. Not to mention that most social media background checkers are generally untrained as there is no consistent framework for analysis. There are more arguments against than for integrating social media checks overall.

Social media checks can also provide a far more candid glimpse into an applicant's personal life than that person may have wished. So, it's a fair question to ask if simply scraping this data off the web is akin to invading someone's privacy? This argument is all the more relevant because background checks are considered consumer reports by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). This is federal legislation designed to promote accurate, fair, and private background checks as well as other consumer reports. It also sets the standards for employment screening. Additionally, it oversees the collection and use of consumer credit information. For these reasons and more, two of our six vendors do not offer this service.

Some companies only background-check certain groups; for example, they check finance, HR, and legal department applicants but don't necessarily check on anyone who seeks to work in creative fields. The reason behind this specialization can be market-driven or be because the software targets resources that verify specific data points for the groups about which they care. This can be attractive to many vertical customers and it's a good way for employment background check services to differentiate themselves.

Important Considerations

Other employment background check services, however, check everything from soup to nuts, regardless of who its candidates are. For instance, if your organization works for the government and deals with government contracts, then you're almost always required to complete a full background check on everybody coming into the company. This check can often be more in-depth within different agencies, including, for example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). But it's important to have a consistent, overall company policy.

Most third-party employment background check services deliver historical data going back seven years because that's how long companies are required to keep data and offer different options for customers to initiate the screening process. You basically have two options of initiating an employee background check: You can enter it yourself as an employer, which means you must have that information on hand and permission from the applicant to do so. Or you can send an auto-generated email to the candidate so that they sign and enter that information for themselves.

One important consideration you'll need to address offline—and likely with both your IT and legal departments—is what happens to this data after you've taken receipt of a report. What's in these reports is usually considered highly personal data by the subject, so losing it in a data breach or simply through negligence can have significant repercussions in many cases. Additionally, new developments in data privacy, such as the implementation of the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation can place even more responsibility not just on the providers of this data but on those that take delivery of it as well. So remember to sit down with your legal and IT teams to put together a simple workflow that will let you not only access this data efficiently but store and dispose of it properly, too.

Differentiating Features

After ordering an employment background check report, turnaround time is a major factor since it's critical not only to how quickly an employer can fill seats but also to how quickly a promising candidate can be locked down. All vendors claim fast turnaround times, but in reality, these are estimates because every report is heavily affected by how quickly outside data resources respond to requests. Federal databases are fairly quick, but scans across county databases or municipal court records can take much longer. I found some of the vendors mapped completion to these dates, while others gave a short turnaround estimate and then sent status updates notifying me of delays.

The data provided by these company can vary quite widely depending on the role, location, regulatory factors, and and other needs specific to the customer, which means whoever requests and pays for the report. While a company with a small budget might just check references, those with more resources can employ one of these services to check anything from credit reports to criminal history. It is important to be mindful of how much you're paying, what type of data you're requesting, and what happens to that data after you use it.

Because of the costs involved, companies tend to wait until the candidate is in the final stages, either right before the company tenders an offer or right after they receive an accepted offer back from the individual. In the latter case, the job offer becomes contingent on passing the employee background check. Credit checks require a separate authorization from job candidates and are not usually run unless the role applied for has fiduciary responsibility.

The aforementioned PBSA is an independent organization that provides FCRA educational courses and provides a decent library of general resources for HR professionals and business operators. The PBSA also accredits business operators in the field, an accreditation that is governed by the Background Screening Credentialing Council (BSCC). It's a good idea to research any employment background check service provider you might be considering to determine whether or not they're a PBSA-accredited service. You can search for accredited services in the PBSA-Accredited Firms Directory here. Checkr, GoodHire, IntelliCorp, and SterlingOne are PBSA-accredited services. Out of the six services we reviewed for this roundup, there were only two we could not verify as being PBSA-accredited services. Those services were Accio Data and A Good Employee.com.

Our Winners

Checkr, GoodHire, and IntelliCorp earned our Editors' Choice awards because these services' user interfaces (UIs) are clean, well-designed, and make life easiest on HR managers. All three services let users easily order reports, track progress, and communicate with their candidates. They all also deliver a significant number of integrations with other HR applicant tracking systems and data houses, which makes things easier on HR managers. This, of course, becomes more important as the volume of potential hires increases and HR departments need to form a timely and accurate picture of potential candidates within a reasonable time frame. This is even more critical in competitive areas like technology, engineering, and financial services where prized applicants can be swept away by more aggressive competitors seeking to fill the same positions faster.

Another key point of differentiation we found across these services was price; our three winners are competitive in this area. Checkr, GoodHire, and IntelliCorp are priced at $35, $29.99, and $27.95 per report, respectively. Plus, they are all transparent when it comes to communicating their pricing prior to engagement; IntelliCorp was the most reasonably priced.

Among our other players, A Good Employee.com is another good choice for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) as well as any business that operates in the real estate management industry because the service provides several features that map directly to that vertical. Accio Data offered me a peek inside the back-end side of the Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) industry, as its software platform was full-featured, flexible, and able to be quickly re-branded by their CRA customers.

The data provided by these companies can vary quite widely depending on the role, location, regulatory factors, and and other needs specific to the customer, which means whoever requests and pays for the report. While a company with a small budget might just check references, those with more resources can employ one of these services to check anything from credit reports to criminal history. It is important to be mindful of how much you're paying, what type of data you're requesting, and what happens to that data after you use it.

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