Hiring a new employee is a massive investment. All sorts of costs are involved in the hiring and onboarding process, from hosting job applications on websites to paying hiring teams to sort through applications, conduct interviews, and pay for the entire training process. Hiring is a long, complex process, but thankfully, tools have been introduced to help streamline it and improve efficiency.
Considering how expensive it is to recruit and onboard a new employee — anywhere from $4,000 to $20,000, not counting their salary or any other benefits they may receive — businesses want to ensure they are hiring the right person. If an organization hires a new employee only to find out they’re not a good fit, it ultimately equates to thousands of dollars wasted on someone who won’t stay with the organization.
However, the hiring process is not as straightforward as finding the best person on paper for the job. For instance, a report by SHRM found that 31 percent of respondents admitted to lying about their resumes, and 56 percent admitted to stretching the truth.
With this knowledge, it becomes clear that resumes and job descriptions don’t provide a complete and accurate picture of a candidate’s potential in the workplace. Hiring teams must dive deeper before making any final hiring decisions.
How background checks will help you make better decisions in hiring
Recent innovations in background check technology have made it easier than ever to conduct background checks. Additionally, this software can be integrated directly into an organization’s existing hiring and HR platforms through APIs, making the process incredibly intuitive.
Background check technology can be integrated seamlessly into off-the-shelf and proprietary platforms, eliminating duplicate data entry and maintenance issues. This helps businesses save time, share data, and ensure accuracy. Hiring teams will also be able to quickly and easily learn this technology, integrating it into their hiring process as an essential step as any other in finding a great candidate.
Many people think of background checks in a criminal sense, often most frequently used to ensure that prospective hires do not have a criminal history, but background checks can reveal much more about an applicant than this. For example, they can be used to verify important identifying information, such as social security numbers, previous employment, education, professional licensure, credit reports, and more. In other words, background checks assure you that the person you hire is who they say they are.
Considering other factors in the hiring process
That being said, many more factors play a part in an employee’s success in the workplace than their hard skills. A person can have all the qualifications and experience it should take to thrive in a job and still not be the best for it because of factors like cultural fit, which is why a candidate’s resume and background check are only part of the hiring process. The interview remains an essential part of a hiring decision because it allows businesses to understand better who they are hiring as a person, not just a list of experiences.
Skilled hiring managers will be able to find the intersection between a candidate’s skills and the less tangible qualities they bring to the workplace. Information learned in a background check can inform the interview process, revealing information that can be explored more deeply during a conversation. By training hiring teams on what red flags (and green flags) to look out for, those hiring managers can ask more insightful, probing questions to help them determine an employee’s aptitude for the workplace.
Some organizations have also begun using tools like personality tests to assess factors like a candidate’s potential cultural fit in ways that resumes alone could not identify. However, this data alone is not necessarily helpful—a hiring team must be specially trained to analyze it and understand what it signifies. Although this tool is not designed to be used independently, it can effectively supplement other hiring techniques.
Training and hiring new employees is expensive and time-consuming. While you can’t see into the future to ensure a new hire is a perfect fit for your business, you can use information from the past to make a more educated, informed decision. With the help of tools like advanced background check technology, your business can ensure that you are only investing in hiring and training employees who are right for the job.
