How Do You Choose a Background Screening Partner? Hint: Technology Matters!

March 30, 2022

The History of Background Screening Technology

Background screening has been around since the 1980s and became increasingly automated with the expansion of Internet technologies in the early 2000s. And, for the most part, it’s using the same processes, data, and/or fulfillment partners. Many of the first-to-market and established digital screening platforms are still based in old technologies (older .Net stacks, Coldfusion, PHP, a lot of “stored procedure” in proprietary databases, hard coded point-to-point integrations, and older front end frameworks like GWT and JSP), and some of the established providers use multiple, or regional platforms, as opposed to a flexible and configurable global platform. These factors lead to poor user experiences for all participants in the process, workflow issues, delays due to manual processing, and increased operational costs.

The Needs of Today

But with the changing times and the fast-moving technology evolutions that have followed in the 10-15 years, needs have changed! Today, there are many necessary factors to consider for background screening, especially speed, automation, configurability, and scalability. The current state of the insta-world and hiring patterns, the Great Resignation, increased flexibility and mobility, and the rise of the gig economy all demand these features in hiring, and subsequently background check technology.

And of course, given the nature of background screening, built-in security and compliance are incredibly important today, and being in accordance with state and city requirements, GDPR, CCPA, etc.

Technology comes into play as well, demanding a flexible global platform, design for a mobile experience, delivering agile solutions via configurability, as well as rapid integration of multiple sources of information for verification.

Additionally, as social behaviors also change, and society is now sharing just about everything, screening needs are expanding beyond traditional employment or tenants domain, with consumers playing a key role in the process.

What should you look for in a background screening company?

When looking to select a background screening vendor, here’s what you should look for and consider:

Speed – faster screening turn-around-time (TAT) and streamlined experience but also the ability to quickly adjust features via configurations, resolve defects when they arise, automate, and integrate.
Customer support & user experience – people matter (no matter which roles they play), so look under the hood.
Technology –
- -Single flexible and configurable global platform – better visibility, transparency, best practices, consistency around the globe for large global companies.
- -Cloud first solution – taking advantage of enhanced security and massive scalability options with leading cloud provider like Azure, AWS, GCP etc.
Cost – ties into technology scalability, single global platform, cloud technology, providing the most effective trade-off between what is needed and what is possible in terms of configurability and deployment options.
Security and compliance – built-in with changing regulations.

The Future of Background Screening

Individuals can, should, and will want to carry their validated credentials in their portfolio or resume, which will ultimately help individuals and employers.

Securely and selectively sharing verified data is becoming the norm, and will continue to be increasingly important as people share more information for purposes beyond hiring and housing. We are already seeing it with health information (vaccine records, testing records, etc.)

Additionally, we will see AI continue to expand and help with speed, decision making and automation in many technologies and processes, and this is certainly true in global background screening.

Consider Kredifi

Kredifi is changing the game and disrupting the screening industry with its innovative approaches to the demands of the modern world. If you are a CRA and wondering how you can accelerate your growth, and deliver your customers a pleasant and seamless solution that is also effective and efficient for you, consider Kredifi. Here are few reasons why:

Technology:

Kredifi offers a modern and future proof global cloud provider agnostic platform, built upon modern and well adopted open source software technology, developed using modern product development patterns (e.g. mobile first, containerized microservices, configurations/feature flags) This allows us to offer faster screening, easily configurable screening programs, and a better, more streamlined experience, as you can use any device, anywhere.

Compliance & Security:

We offer enhanced reporting, analytics, alerts, etc.
Kredifi uses Augmented Intelligence (not pure AI, but AI with Human Intelligence) for better compliance

Cost:

We are the first in the industry to offer subscription-based pricing options, which can be much more cost-effective and predictable.
With efficiencies built into the technologies, as well as the ability to screen and share, hiring happens faster with Kredifi. One day saved in hiring can translate to $200 – $800 in increased revenue.

Customer support:

We believe in empowering individuals to securely self screen, store, and share their data.
Our team is committed to providing the highest levels of service.

Speed and efficiency:

Screening and sharing enables employers for faster hiring, and prospective employees with having a hand in speed and control.

Agility:

We believe in continuing expanding our platform working alongside our customers, and growing with them
We can build new capabilities fast as long as they are applicable for the majority of our customers needs

Join the many companies who believe in disrupting the age-old screening processes, as well as the many startups in the HR technology space looking to speed up hiring, who are all signing up with Kredifi.