Study: 38% of employers have lost candidates due to poor background screening processes

According to a recent CareerBuilder survey, 38% of employers have lost a candidate because they had a negative experience with their background check.

However, less than half of HR managers who conduct background checks have tested their background check experience themselves. And when employers do test their process, they identify a less than ideal candidate experience, with around 1 in 6 rating their background check candidate experience as fair or poor.

The survey recommends three strategies to help optimize your background check process for candidates:

1. Partner with the best. Make sure your provider keeps up with compliance standards and provides timely communication and support to candidates.
2. Check the clock. The longer the background check, the higher the risk of losing the candidate to another employer.
3. Test the candidate experience. Not only is it important for employers to experience the process firsthand to make sure it is easy and straightforward, it’s important to seek direct feedback from your candidates.

The ability to attract and retain talent on a consistent basis is a key tenet to the prosperity of any organization.

To do this, employers have started to shift their focus away from sourcing tools and instead to creating better candidate experiences. The screening process is a big part of this experience.

Here are a few of our recommendations on how to provide the best possible candidate experience.

The Career Builder national survey, conducted online by Harris Poll from May 24 to June 16, 2017, included representative samples of 2,369 full-time employers (including 221 HR managers) and 3,462 full-time U.S. workers across industries and company sizes in the private sector.