Everybody understands the practical advantages of background screening, from encouraging a safer workplace to dodging internal harms like fraud or data breaches. However, there are lesser understood advantages that can also greatly benefit your organization — benefits like greater employee engagement, higher retention and a stronger sense of employer brand.
Engaging and keeping your top team members is greatly influenced by the candidate experience, but it doesn’t stop there.
The background screening process is often a missed opportunity for companies to maintain a positive relationship with candidates, even those who don’t make it past the interview process. Use these four tactics to seamlessly tie your recruiting and screening steps.
Don't drop the ball between your first interaction and decision day.
Retention begins with recruiting, not just onboarding. While employers are embracing the candidate experience at earlier touch points in the hiring process, attention to the candidate experience is often overlooked in the background screening step.
This poses a problem for candidates if they’re left in the dark during this necessary step of screening, one that sometimes slows down the hiring process. By this point, the candidate's recruiting experience has set their expectations of the journey into your organization, and if you aren't alleviating their anxiety by keeping them informed of the progress of their screening and providing clear next steps, you’llrisk losing them to a competitor that keeps them updated and engaged.
Encourage a positive image of your employer brand.
Don’t let your employer brand take a backseat during the screening process. An intrusive process coupled with multiple messages from your screening vendor can “turn off” candidates from engaging with your brand.
With the right screening partner and a smart process in place, you can deliver a consistent, branded experience in which you steer the messaging, and candidates feel supported by the screening partner instead of pushed around by them. It's also crucial to consider how your interactions with rejected candidates can affect the employer brand. In today's world of networks, word about your company travels fast, which can help or hurt your employer brand.
Integrate the screening process for simplicity.
If you integrate your recruiting system with your screening provider, it’s not only easier to manage brand consistency in the candidate experience, but HR and hiring managers reap the extra benefits of a streamlined workflow. Speed up the hiring process by conducting screening tasks on candidates within your ATS. Combined with powerful predictive analytics, you'll be an unstoppable hiring machine.
Put candidates first to win the war on talent.
When you set the stage with an engaging recruiting experience, it's important to keep the momentum with a transparent background screening process. Deliver a great candidate experience to maintain a stronger image of your employer brand and to drive engagement and retention.
Transparency is the currency of our digital age. The war on talent will be won by employers who work with their technology partners to provide an experience that meets their candidates' expectations at each step of their journey.
Learn more about creating an efficient, compliant and candidate-centric background screening process by visiting TalentWise’s Background Screening Resource Center.
Don Darrah is the Vice President of Alliances at TalentWise, overseeing and developing the partner ecosystem, with previous experience in alliances and business development at a number of leading HCM providers. With over 20 years of experience in the HCM landscape, Don brings a wealth of knowledge and insight into strategic partnership development and integrated product offerings. He has also authored many articles and presented at a number of industry events and forums.
