Apr 13 2016 Staffing Solutions: The Importance of Background Checks with Job Boards
Stay on target.
A tighter labor market has meant that employers have had to go where the applicants are to fill the roles they most need, and online job boards have been an enormous boon to the companies in need of jobs filled. But just like anywhere else on the Internet, you get what you pay for, and the lower the price now, it might cost you the most in the long run.
By The Boards
Job boards are useful for getting a high volume of applicants in part because it’s “low-risk” for all involved. An applicant generally enters a detailed resume the site keeps on file, and searches the site using specific criteria such as distance from their zip code, industry, and job requirements. Most hiring managers will post the same job to multiple job boards to ensure they’re being seen by the maximum number of users.
That said, though, there’s rarely any sort of “quality check” for applicants. The job board business model depends heavily on having as many users as possible on the site at all times, preferably clicking on every job post they can find and applying for the jobs they’re qualified for as regularly as they can. Furthermore, it’s a competitive business with small margins, which makes background checks for every applicant prohibitively expensive for many job boards. In some cases, it falls to the recruiters to report incorrect or prank resumes.
So, unless they explicitly state that candidates have their backgrounds checked before being allowed to apply on the site, you should assume that any applicants you receive have not had anything verified in their background. And even if they have, you should still do a check.
Check First
Don’t get discouraged by fake resumes.
Protecting yourself from negligent hiring liability should be part of any recruiting process, and simply put, a hiring site’s background checks are unlikely to suit your needs. How much do you know about this check? How extensive was it? What were the results? Which agency ran the check? How reliable are they?
Even if the check was extensive, it won’t matter much if you can’t verify the results. Especially in roles where you need the right expertise or where your employee will be working closely with the public, you need to have 100% confidence in who you’re hiring. So any applicant, no matter where they come from, should be thoroughly checked.
Be sure to make clear that this is a requirement in any job posting you’re putting up, job board or not. Clarity on the hiring process is important both to stay in compliance with federal law and to limit contact with applicants unsuitable for the job, and it’s a common courtesy for good applicants who may need to disclose potential hiring issues early in the process.
Job boards can be a useful tool for finding the right applicant for the right job. But they need to be approached the same way you’d view an applicant who contacts you through other methods. A background check verifies you’re hiring the right person, no matter how you find them. Don’t hesitate to get the best:
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