November 2013
www.hrotoday.com
Searching For The
Perfect Candidate?
Background screening will help
ensure that your talent checks out.
Plus:
Hiring, Simplified
Complimentary pages provided courtesy of
Learn more by contacting First Advantage at
866.400.3238 or solutions@fadv.com.
Cover Story
Screening 2.0
Technology is helping to elevate the verification process.
By Russ Banham
Frito-Lay’s respective founders didn’t need to conduct
employment background checks when each launched the
companies that would eventually merge to become Frito-Lay
in 1961. Charles Doolin was Frito’s sole employee when he
began selling corn chips from the back of his Model T Ford in
1932. The same year, Herman W. Lay began his potato chip
business in much the same fashion.
Fast-forward a few decades and it’s a different story. FritoLay, now part of giant PepsiCo, employs 48,000 people
worldwide. Hiring employees requires extensive background
checks as part of the employment process. In addition to
maintaining compliance with employment regulations, the
company also seeks to deliver an accurate and swift process
for job candidates and its own internal talent acquisition
needs.
“We want to present a clear message to job applicants
that we are an employer of choice with a strong employee
value proposition,” says Lauren McEntire, senior manager
of organization and management development at Plano,
Texas-based Frito-Lay NA, a division of PepsiCo. “Being upto-date with hiring technology systems and processes, in the
context of the candidate experience, is an important part of
this goal.”
It is also important to Frito-Lay that job candidates
experience a straightforward process when providing
information necessary to do a background check. To do
this successfully, there are many technology elements
at play behind the scenes. By integrating Frito-Lay’s
applicant tracking system (ATS) with the background
screening technology, the candidate’s perception is one of a
“polished, seamless process to share his or her employment
information,” McEntire says. “It is important to us that
candidates can provide authorizations and disclosures for
background screening in a simple, secure way that is also
seamless, so they have no concerns about what they’re
Cover Story
sharing. We put a lot of time and effort to make sure the
hiring process is extremely smooth and accurate.”
Frito-Lay’s background screening provider is Atlanta-based
First Advantage, which provides a technology solution that
integrates with Frito-Lay’s ATS. First Advantage prides itself
on its invisibility to job candidates. “We realize we represent
the employment brand of our customers,” says Bill Franck,
First Advantage executive vice president and client portfolio
manager. “Every candidate is a potential employee, and
his or her experiences are directly related to their first
interactions with the hiring organization. We want these
to be positive experiences. We want them to feel they are
being treated as human beings. This is the right thing to do
and it also is of great value to the employer’s recruitment
objectives.”
Such experiences have not always been the case with
background screening. Slip-ups were not infrequent in the
past, particularly cases where people have common last
names like Johnson or Smith. No one wants to be accused
of another’s crime or of having presented inaccurate
educational criteria.
“A common mistake is a father and son with the same name,
albeit missing the Jr. and Sr.,” Franck notes. “The son is right
out of college with a stellar future ahead of him, but his
father had trouble with the law in past. Meanwhile, their
address is the same. If the background screener does not use
multiple record identifiers, accuracy can be a problem.”
To minimize the possibility of error, employee screening
provider Orange Tree leverages identifiers provided by the
applicant or developed through the screening process (like a
date of birth, middle names and initials, name suffix, AKAs
and current and former addresses). Says Heidi Seaton, vice
president of operations and compliance for the Minneapolisbased company, “Our priority is to confirm a potential record
really is a match to the applicant before we would report it
to an employer.”
Checks and Balances
Organizations mitigate risk through background screening
to avoid hiring an employee with a criminal past or a
range of fictitious accomplishments. And it’s warranted.
According to the ADP Annual Screening Index, 41 percent of
employment, education and/or credential reference checks
revealed a difference of information between what the
applicant provided and what the source reported. Two-thirds
of all job applicants in another study say they have stretched the
truth at least once in an effort to land a job. And more than a
few job applicants have been able to hide criminal pasts.
“The reality of the industry is that although some employers
and schools do store historical verification information
by social security number, the majority of county court
systems do not,” says Seaton. “A thorough criminal search
(is required) to assure that a criminal record really does
belong to an applicant before we report that record to an
employer.”
Hiring the wrong employee is dangerous and expensive.
Workplace violence accounts for 18 percent of all violent
crime, according to one study, and, of the 4,547 fatal
workplace injuries that occurred in the United States in
2010, 506 were workplace homicides, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports.
Background screening is a vital part of the employment
process, one that, if done well, can result in superior talent
acquisition at lower cost. According to the U.S. Small
Business Administration, for every dollar an employer invests
in employment screening, the return on this investment
ranges between $5 and $16, resulting from improved
productivity, reduced absenteeism, lower turnover, and
decreased employer liability.
With regard to the cost, the U.S. Department of Labor finds
that the average employer expense for a bad hiring decision
can equal 30 percent of the employee’s first-year income.
Nearly 80 percent of worker turnover problems are linked to
poor hiring decisions, and the longer that wrong employees
stay on the job, the more it will cost to replace them.
These sobering facts explain the vital necessity of assuring
the most accurate background checks possible. At the same
time, it is equally important that the job candidate not feel
like he or she is being unfairly judged or singled out because
of an overly burdensome screening process. For employers,
this can be a Solomon-like exercise, given the various laws
and regulations governing employment practices.
“With the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission) and FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act)
regulations, in addition to similar state rules, we need to
ensure for our clients that we’re in complete compliance, so
nothing pops up to affect their employment brand,” says
Brandon Phillips, president and CEO of Global HR Research,
Cover Story
a Fort Myers, Fla.-based employee lifecycle management
provider that provides background screening services and
ATS solutions.
The firm takes compliance so seriously that it has hired a
former Secret Service agent, James Parker, as its director of
compliance. “He works with our legal department and chief
operating officer to make sure that any changes in state
employment laws or federal regulations are carefully and
closely monitored,” Phillips says. “We then make fast and
thorough adjustments to our system to ensure we are in
compliance with the changing regulations, and at the same
time inform our clients of these changes.”
McEntire from Frito-Lay says the data analytics she receives
on a routine basis from First Advantage assists the company
to make more informed decisions. “We are at the mercy of
court records, and First Advantage helps us determine what
background searches and components are most likely to
return the most accurate and comprehensive records. While
we want to hire the best quality candidate possible, we also
want to give every candidate the opportunity to compete
for the job. First Advantage helps us do both.”
Branding Benefits
Employment branding is playing a larger role in the talent
acquisition process, and swift and painless background
screening can have a positive impact. Organizations strive to
portray the reasons why the best and brightest would want
to work for them. A hiring experience that is error-prone,
overly intrusive, or suggests the employer is technologically
unsophisticated will likely steer top-notch talent elsewhere.
“The competition for skills is fierce, making it that much
more important that the employer strike the right tone
with the candidate by ensuring a smooth and speedy hiring
experience,” Franck says. “It also must provide the highest
degree of accuracy.”
In this regard, the firm has developed a dispute mechanism
whereby it allows candidates at any time to get their full
background report. “If we find something derogatory, we
notify the candidate in writing what we’ve found. If they
feel the information is not accurate, they can call into our
dispute center and work towards a resolution,” Franck says.
Accuracy, speed and an efficient, positive candidate
experience are the same qualities that gaming company
Penn National seeks to provide its job applicants. “My job
is to focus on efforts that improve interactions with our job
candidates, and simplifying the application process is a huge
part of this,” says Tamsin Bencivengo, talent acquisition
manager at the Wyomissing, Penn.-based gaming company,
comprised of 19 casinos, race tracks and off-track wagering
sites across the country.
“The integration between our ATS and our provider’s
background screening technology is crucial in these
regards,” she explains. “We want everything to be electronic
and in one system, and for the candidate to not realize there
is a separate background screening vendor [Orange Tree] in
the background.”
One of her goals is to limit the amount of candidate effort
involved in the hiring process. “By pulling the data the
applicant provides to Orange Tree into our ATS, they only
input this information once,” she says. “This makes the
experience simplified and streamlined and it shortens the
time to hire for us. It’s a win-win: It enhances the candidate
experience, while positively affecting our bottom line.”
System-to-system integration is important also to Frito-Lay.
“We can order a background check from our ATS and view
all updates in the ATS,” McEntire says. “It is nice for our
front line administrators and hiring managers not to have
separate accounts, logins, and people for resets and other
issues.”
Franck from First Advantage points out how the process
works: “They give us the candidate information and we send
emails to the applicants to create their own login, user ID
and password. To the candidate, it all looks like Frito-Lay
is contacting them for this information directly and is also
receiving it.”
Technological sophistication is similarly important to the
candidate experience, he adds. “If we are missing certain
information, we interact with the candidate electronically,
which is the way most job hunters, particularly Millennials,
want to interact,” Franck says. “Again, it appears they are
interacting solely and exclusively with Frito-Lay.”
Since candidate information is only entered once, there
is less chance of error. “The fewer touch points there are,
the greater the accuracy and speed, which is important in
the `war for talent,’” Franck asserts. “The recruiter and the
hiring manager each get the data right away and have a
single view of this information.”
Cover Story
New Tweaks
The interplay between employers and providers is
improving. First Advantage, for instance, recently added a
mobile feature to its background screening platform. “This
way, a recruiter at a job fair away from his or her desk can
check on the status of people going through the screening
process,” Franck says. “If a candidate moves from `in
process’ to `approve,’ it’s there for them to see, and thereby
immediately extend an offer. It’s just one more way to fill
the job post faster.”
Global HR Research offers its clients that lack an ATS access
to its own proprietary applicant tracking system, called
Jobmatcher. The ATS is linked to the firm’s background
screening technology. “We also have a screening solution
for volunteers—people who are independent contractors or
other types of contingent workers,” Phillips says.
While the providers ease the hiring process, Bencivengo
at Penn National points out that at the end of the day,
the employer still has to make the decision of whom to
hire. “It is great that we are gathering all this information
when we need it, but if something is disclosed during the
screening process it is our responsibility to dig into it,” she
explains. “While Orange Tree has provided hiring guides
that assist us through the system that advise us to stop,
proceed, or conduct a review, it is our responsibility to still
carefully weigh this information to make the appropriate
hiring decisions.”
Alas, this part of the employment process cannot be
outsourced.
Verification
Value
Background screening
delivers some very
influential information.
Consider the following:
•
The ADP Annual Screening Index reports
41 percent of employment, education, and/
or credential reference checks revealed a
difference of information between what
the applicant provided and what the source
reported.
•
Sixty-six percent of all job applicants say they
have stretched the truth at least once in an
effort to land a job.
•
The U.S. Small Business Administration
reports for every dollar an employer invests
in employment screening, the return on this
investment ranges between $5 and $16.
•
The U.S. Department of Labor finds that the
average employer expense for a bad hiring
decision can equal 30 percent of the employee’s
first-year income.
Pre-employment Screening
Hiring, Simplified
Texas A&M streamlined its screening process by leveraging technology.
By Stefano Malnati
Everything is bigger in Texas—and Texas A&M University’s
hiring process was producing some real big headaches. Ranked
as the United States’ sixth largest university, Texas A&M
educates more than 50,000 students, including 10,000 graduate
students, studying in more than 120 undergraduate and 240
graduate degree programs in 10 colleges. The human resources
department of the university oversees hiring for every position
covering a wide variety of roles and responsibilities. Adding
to the complexity was placing candidates in multiple locations
including its main campus in College Station, Texas and two
branch campuses in Galveston, Texas and Qatar.
Coordinating screening for more than 11,000 applications last
year left Texas A&M’s human resources department in a battle
against time. Positions ranged from key professors down to
students supporting a college-sponsored summer camp. HR
executives were entering hiring data directly into an online
platform, which was very time consuming. The University
was also looking to streamline processes, eliminate human
error, and leverage data to drive well-informed decisions. An
additional objective was to improve communications with
applicants and across the organization.
The Solution
First Advantage’s Enterprise Advantage solution helped
Texas A&M streamline applicant screening and added a layer
of efficiency to their hiring workflow. Beginning with the
initial background check application, the candidate data tool
delivered a Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) notice to every
candidate prior to submitting their information. Because this
was gathered electronically, it was an easily auditable report.
Texas A&M could also leverage electronic signatures, which
saved time when an education verification or other verifications
were required. It also eliminated the need to reach out back to
the applicant for more paperwork.
The University also wanted to improve communication with
applicants so now emails go out to candidates individually or by
batch through a singular email address—@texasA&M—to help
reduce confusion.
The solution also expanded the University’s scope through
its national-level database. When HR executives submit
information, they now have access to a robust database of
information to widen the University’s scope outside of Texas.
This reach encompassed all of the proprietary data from First
Advantage, as well as hitting 47 state sex offender registries.
Screens can also include Social Security Number Verification to
sped identity confirmation and a national criminal file search.
The technology can facilitate different levels of background
checks depending on specific position requirements.
Configurable reports allowed HR to monitor an applicant’s
status across the entire Texas A&M University, which
strengthened communication between campuses. “First
Advantage delivered a great all-in-one solution that shortened
our application cycle and positively impacted the hiring process
at each stage,” reports Cheryl McDonald, recruiting and
workforce management, Texas A&M.
The custom reporting functionality also provided access
to data around all units and bill back as necessary to each
department. The reports were delivered according to specific
time requirements to those departments that needed them the
most. This resulted in less time manipulating data and more
time focusing on pressing initiatives.
The Result
The implementation of the Enterprise Advantage solution
helped Texas A&M compress the application process while
adding a new level of communications efficiency with both
applicants and the HR department. “What used to take days
and multiple efforts to collect the right information now takes
less than an hour,” shares McDonald. “We’ve dramatically
reduced the time it takes to get the information we need to
focus on hiring decisions.”
The First Advantage solutions optimized visibility into the
hiring process while creating a fast way to track the applicant’s
progress and maintain thorough documentation. “With the
First Advantage solutions, we’ve eliminated duplicate efforts
and achieved our goal of operating in a paperless environment.
The solutions helped us centralize the application so the
pertinent information and current application status is all
in one place and easily shared across our field locations,”
McDonald says.
Stefano Malnati is chief innovation and technology officer for First
Advantage.
Eprinted and posted with permission to First Advantage Corporation from HRO Today
November © 2013 SharedXpertise, LLC. (Expires on July 31, 2014)
Learn more by contacting First Advantage
at 866.400.3238 or solutions@fadv.com.