by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 14, 2016 | Fingerprinting
Fingerprinting | A Guide To Quality (Not Just Quantity) Hires Pt. 2
Fingerprinting | A strong brand or positive reviews in the industry or on social media can go a long way in attracting more candidates. [ Tweet this!]
6. Consider using temporary staffing agencies
Staffing a temp is sometimes a good way to “try someone out” before you commit to hiring them full-time.
7. Conduct thorough background screens
This is can be a crucial step to help you evaluate who you are hiring.
The fact is that candidates may try to embellish their resume and can potentially fake their way through a great interview.
Background screens can help weed out the impostors and may deter candidates who know about your screening process from lying. [ Tweet this!]
How to Keep Quality Employees:
1. Offer better benefits besides pay
Candidates consider many factors when looking for a job, besides the pay.
Other benefits, such as flexible work schedules, positive work environments, or longer parental leave, may be more important to a candidate than salary alone.
2. Conduct exit interviews
Exit interviews can give great insight to why people are leaving your organization. [ Tweet this!]
Another way to focus on employee retention is to conduct stay interviews. These types of interviews allow managers to assess what is and isn’t working in the work environment.
3. Start quality hires at the top
Hire supervisors that are supportive and can communicate clear expectations that will facilitate a positive work environment and promote job security. [ Tweet this!]
4. Create an open work environment
Employees should be able to offer feedback and feel that they have a voice that is heard within an organization.
5. Offer opportunities and growth
People will tend to leave a job when they feel like there is no more room for growth. -HireRight
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss fingerprinting services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!
by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 13, 2016 | Fingerprinting
Fingerprinting | A Guide To Quality (Not Just Quantity) Hires Pt. 1
Fingerprinting | As unemployment rates decrease to their lowest number in years, employers face a new challenge managing their workforce.
According to the HireRight’s 2016 Benchmark Report, respondents report that finding qualified job candidates and keeping good employees are the top investment categories they plan to focus on.
Now that the job market is more candidate-centric, employees are more likely to switch jobs in pursuit of a better work environment, benefits package, salary, or opportunity.
Employers are recognizing the increase in employee turnover and are looking for ways to not only find qualified workers, but to retain them too. [ Tweet this!]
Hiring, onboarding, and training a new employee can be a costly prospect for an employer, making it worthwhile to try and keep an employee who is familiar with the job and the organization.
How to Attract Qualified Candidates:
1. Start with clear and understandable job descriptions
Outlining specific experience points, qualities, and expected work ethic will allow you to attract the type of employee you want for the job.
Also, consider livening up the job description and include other bonuses of working for your organization, such as the great team they’ll work with or the casual dress code.
2. Use your current employee network
Many good employees are often found and recruited by reference of a current employee.
Most people will only recommend someone they believe will be a good worker, since a bad hire might tarnish their personal or professional reputation. [ Tweet this!]
3. Reevaluate the hiring process
Is it too long or complicated?
Many candidates don’t want to waste their time and will often take another opportunity if it presents itself before you can even get them past the initial stages of vetting.
You might try group interviewing to speed up the process, and at minimum, make sure your candidate is aware of what to expect with respect to your entire evaluation process. [ Tweet this!]
4. Make the interviewing process a two-way street
Encouraging candidates to ask questions during the interview may give the insight into what is really important to that person.
It may also give them a glimpse into what it’s really like to work for your organization.
5. Improve your company brand
People want to work for a company that is well known or has a good reputation. -HireRight
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss fingerprinting services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!
by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 13, 2016 | Background Screening
Background Screening | Considering “Do-It-Yourself” Online Background Checks? Pt. 2
Background Screening | Rather than sacrificing company resources to ensure accuracy, it may be best to leave it to a consumer reporting agency who has a duty of accuracy under the FCRA.
Additionally, a comprehensive background check requires a thorough investigation of multiple sources of information.
Not only are screenings expected to go through many databases, they are expected to search best sources of information including the most relevant repositories for the most pertinent information.
Without the expertise and time, the search for accurate results against a comprehensive set of sources can outweigh the benefits of a DIY background check.
What will I get for my money?
As a perk of all things digital, online background checks are marketed to be cheaper than those from a third-party screening company.
However, the depth and accuracy of such services may not meet the needs of companies requiring a thorough search conducted by an experienced CRA that can be contacted with questions and maintains compliance with the FCRA.
In order to gain access to some official documents, such as criminal records in some states, requestors may be charged upwards of $50 by the official repository of that State’s criminal records.
If a DIY background check company charges anything less, there is valid reason to believe that the report will not yield results on par with those sourced directly with the State by a CRA.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, the decision to outsource online background screenings is completely at the discretion of your company.
DIY online background checks may sound appealing due to their quick, cost-effective nature but they pose risks that you, as an employer, will have to contend with.
The FCRA has dictated stringent regulations that demand compliance for Consumer Reporting Agencies. For example, companies should notice whether a service will outright call itself a consumer reporting agency.
If the company is not willing to market itself as a Consumer Reporting Agency, they probably are not in compliance with FCRA.
Some DIY background check sites even state quite clearly that they are not FCRA compliant and that the information they provide should not be used to make hiring decisions.
Third-party firms, specifically Consumer Reporting Agencies, on the other hand, are FCRA-compliant, and offer expertise and resources that can help ensure legitimacy and accuracy in their findings. -HireRight
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss background screening services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!
by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 12, 2016 | Background Screening
Background Screening | Considering “Do-It-Yourself” Online Background Checks? Pt. 1
Background Screening | As businesses become comfortable using the Internet to handle a variety of support functions, a surprising number and diverse sorts of “Do-It-Yourself” services have become available, including “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) online background checks.
While seemingly simple and affordable, such services present potential risks that could pose a threat to a businesses’ brand.
Here’s a brief list of considerations that could serve as a litmus test as to whether a DIY background check service or a more-conventional Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) is the best choice for you.
Will the search be wide and deep?
As with any type of research upon which your business may depend, background checks require thorough scrutiny of data sources.
Such research expends large amounts of both time and personnel resources. Take, for example, legal records used for criminal background checks.
In the United States, available data differs between federal, state, and municipal levels; for example, there are thousands of jurisdictions where pubic records can be obtained, and the manner for obtaining these records can vary from court to court.
So, depending on how many locations the candidate attended school, lived and worked, researchers may be faced with combing through records maintained in numerous locations.
CRAs typically enlist the aid of court runners since many jurisdictions require in-person representation to access their records.
How will the DIY service you’re considering deal with this complex and often inconsistent process?
Also, DIY services may merely aggregate information on a candidate based on readily-available online data, to include publicly available information contained in news stories and social media accounts.
Ask if that is the case because solely using and relying upon such information presents potential legal risks to an employer; the information may be on the wrong person, incorrect or out of date.
And making a hiring decision based on a candidate’s public online persona without ensuring the data is accurate and complete may be deemed prejudicial.
Will the results be accurate?
Regardless of how meticulous it is, each background check may yield confusing and erroneous findings.
And, as noted above, the information may not refer to the right candidate.
Even when handling such tasks using internal resources, companies can spend massive amounts of time trying to reconcile such data.
On the other hand, third-party providers bear the responsibility to compile information in an accurate manner for their clients. -HireRight
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss background screening services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!
by Employment Screening Alliance | Oct 11, 2016 | Fingerprinting
Fingerprinting | U.S. Drug Test Positivity Rates for Workers at a 10-Year High
Fingerprinting | According to Quest Diagnostics’ recent Drug Testing IndexTM report, the percentage of employees in the U.S. workforce testing positive for drugs has increased over the last three years to a 10-year high of 4.0% in urine specimens.
Key Findings include:
- The positivity rate for urine increased to four percent, a relative change of 2.6 percent over the positivity rate in 2014 (4.0% vs. 3.9%). This rate reflects a relative increase of 14% over the 10-year low of 3.5% in 2010 and 2011.
- Of particular concern is that post-accident urine drug testing positivity increased 6.2% in 2015 compared to 2014 (6.9% vs. 6.5%) and increased 30% since 2011 (5.3%). Particularly noteworthy is that post-accident positivity for the safety-sensitive workforce rose 22% during a five-year time period (2.8% in 2015 vs. 2.3% in 2011).
- Oral-fluid positivity rates increased 47% over the last three years to 9.1% in 2015 from 6.7% in 2013. In 2015, there was a 25% relative increase in marijuana detection compared to 2014 (7.5% vs. 6.0%).
- Not surprising is that the highest positivity rate for drug detection testing methods was hair testing at 10.3% in 2015, a seven percent increase over 2014 (9.6%). Hair testing can show repetitive drug use for as far back as 90 days, while urine detects recent drug use, usually in one to three days. Oral fluid detects recent drug use in the previous 24-48 hours.
- Almost half (45%) of workers with a positive drug test for any substance in 2015 showed evidence of marijuana.
- Amphetamine positivity increased 44 percent and marijuana positivity increased 26% since 2011. Oxycodone positivity rates have declined annually since 2011, which confirms that opioid prescriptions have declined since 2012.
- Heroin positivity increased 146% between 2011 and 2015 for the general U.S. workforce.
- For federally-mandated safety-sensitive employees, heroin positivity increased a relative 4.5% since 2014 and a relative 84% since 2011. In addition, positive rates for amphetamines increased 7% year-over-year (0.58% in 2015 vs. 0.54% in 2014).
The results above are derived from analysis of more than 9.5 million urine, 900,000 oral fluid and 200,000 hair laboratory-based tests performed by Quest Diagnostics in 2015.
The Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index (DTI) examines test results from three categories of workers: federally mandated, safety-sensitive workers; the general workforce; and the combined U.S. workforce.
The strength of the Drug Testing Index analysis includes its large, national sample size, longitudinal monitoring, and a testing population that is generally a good representative sampling of the total composition of the U.S. workforce.
Conclusions
These findings unfortunately provide a sound reason to increase your drug-testing efforts and to continue to enforce a drug-free workplace policy.
Build a testing program that meets your needs and clearly identify which roles require testing in your pre-employment documentation and drug testing policy.
Evaluate urine, oral fluid, and hair testing methods to determine which best meets your needs.
To decide among methods, consider cost, whether testing can be done on-site, and the length of the detection window.
For pre-employment screening, hair testing offers up to 90 days of visibility.
The one-week window of urine or oral fluid testing is appropriate for same-day ongoing screening. -HireRight
Learn what ESA can do for you! Call 866-830-3724 to discuss fingerprinting services or complete the form on www.esascreening.com now!
