Hey everyone, welcome back to Top5 brought to you by DefineTalent. We are a results driven service working with clients to connect them with quality talent as well as working to make an impact within the recruiting industry. We talk straight about today's professional world with real world professionals, experts in recruitment, job seekers and business owners alike. Have a question for us send it in and you might spur our next
conversation. I'm Tara Thurber, Co-founder and Director of Talent Partnerships here at DefineTalent. And joining me today is Bryan Sise, VP of Product and Customer Marketing at Checkr here to share the Top5 Ways Checkr Makes Background Checks Easy & Seamless. Bryan is responsible for educating current and prospective customers about the value and
use of checker products. He is passionate about understanding the needs of companies and candidates who use chapter as well as helping that helping them get the most from the platform. Welcome, Bryan. So excited to have you join us today. Tara, so good to be with you excited to partner with DefinedTalent on this conversation. Hopefully our audience find some value, especially among those folks who are involved in hiring decisions finds value in this conversation.
Absolutely. I'm really excited. And let's just jump right in here. With Checkr, what does a standard background check entail nowadays?
Sure. For any pre-hire standard background check, I have a few things in common. So I'll just walk through the basic steps.
Perfect.
First, the hiring manager or HR manager or business owner will order a background check for a job candidate or a set of candidates. You can either do this, in the case of Checkr via checker zone application, that's the checker dashboard. Or from within one of the many partner applications where we have integrations like Gusto, Green House, Workday, we have something like 100 native integrations with leading HR and
recruiting platforms. So basically, you'll enter in the candidates email address, you'll select the candidates location, you'll choose the package of screenings that you want to run for that individual candidate, and you'll click submit. So that's step one, then the candidate receives an email request that they authorize the check and confirm their info.
They'll enter their info like their legal name and birthdate and they'll electronically sign to authorize and give permission for the background check to be run. And then that info securely transfers to Checkr and that allows the background check to move forward. And then next step
is that we conduct a search. So we're searching through a number of different data sources, for example, from county courthouse records in the case of criminal screenings, or maybe DMV records if we're doing a certain type of motor vehicle background search.
Right.
To understand the background there and then Checkr assembles a background check report. So that is what is delivered to you, the hiring manager or HR manager, Checkr notifies you when it's ready for your review. And if the candidate requested a Checkr sends, them one too. And then you review that report and determine the candidates eligibility for hire based on what your individual
requirements are. And you're going to be deciding whether or not to move forward with a que to engage them and maybe move to an offer or to start the adverse action process. Adverse Action is the process of notifying a candidate that you've decided not to move forward with offering them the job based on the findings in the background check report. So those are the basic steps that pretty much all background checks have in common.
That's awesome. That was actually just on the tip of my tongue to ask is what happens if there if a background check comes back with red flags like is it the potential employers responsibility to bring up those red flags as to why they had to take the adverse action?
Right, we call those red flags considers.
Okay.
Where we essentially draw attention to the adjudicator, who could be the hiring manager or the business owner or the HR person.
Right.
To have them "consider" that particular finding of the background check report and to your thought earlier, it is ultimately the company's decision the adjudicator and the hiring managers decision as to whether or not to move forward based on what they see in that background check report.
Right.
Checkr provides a lot of pretty sophisticated filtering and automation capabilities to make that job of reviewing background check reports easier.
Right.
For example, each company can set custom filters about the types of charges they care about, and that they really want to have their attention drawn to, versus the ones that they may care less about. One example I often use is that if you are fishing without a license, that is actually a misdemeanor, that would go on your criminal record.
Oh, geeze! (laughs)
But my guess is that many companies don't care much about somebody having a misdemeanor of you know, lack of a hunting or fishing license on their record.
Right (laughs).
So, that might be one that an individual customer of ours chooses to filter out in their reports, but it is ultimately up to the company, what they filter out and what they want to closely consider.
Wow, that's awesome. I love it seems the simplicity and ease of it all right at the fingertips for the person that is going to be getting that background check sent out there, or being able to filter what the needs are, and what the wants are outside of other things that may come up that they don't even need to be alerted for or care about.
Why our customers love Checkr that we save them a lot of manual work. And one of the ways we say that manual work it has
Yeah. to do with the background check report. First of all, we're using things like machine learning to be able to normalize and standardize the information that is presented to them in the report, so that you don't have to make sense of all the strange and obscure individual county courthouses refer to a particular aspect of a criminal record or a particular charge. It's presented in a normalized way with explanations of what
each charge is. And then also to the earlier thought, the things they don't care about are just filtered out so they can focus in on the individual charges that might actually impact their decision whether or not to move forward. So that saves time for folks involved in those decisions. Absolutely it does. Absolutely. And then that kind of goes into my next question is around does it vary based on the clients?
Yeah. So we went through the basic steps of the background check-type of screenings that are used, do vary based on the individual preferences of a company or based on the requirements for a role that they're hiring for.
Okay.
For example, you know, many companies choose our essential package. That's kind of our middle tier package, which includes searches of national criminal records, all the county criminal records where the candidate has lived in the past, sex offender registry in the global watch list, which tracks things like terrorism and fraud.
Yup.
That's their core package that they might run on all prospective hires. But depending on individual job roles, that company may choose to add on additional screenings.
Okay.
So for example, they are hiring a driver, like they have a commercial driver who's doing deliveries for them or maybe they're a healthcare company doing home health care, and their worker has to drive to the location where they're delivering that service. The company might choose to run what we call an MVR. That's the motor vehicle record screening, which looks at the candidates driving record.
Yeah.
Or if a company is hiring a nurse, that company might run our professional license verification screening, which is that the nurses state license and other qualifications are current and valid.
Now, this might be an immature question to ask, but with background checks, can you run like I know you can do education in there, but can you do certifications as well? Is that something that's in background checks?
It is. So the sort of standard background check that most people think of which Checkr runs lot on them. I think it's about 35 million annually, is the criminal background
check. It's checking the degree to which somebody has a criminal record and what types of things are on that criminal record to inform possible hiring decision, but a lot of companies care about a lot of additional things and you know, I mentioned the nursing license, but in the case of a particular type of screening that we call professional license verification, it verifies the existence of a lot of different
qualifications. that a person might claim that they have on their resume, certain types of state licenses and so on. Another example might be drug testing, right?
Mmm hmm.
You care about drug testing, and they want to confirm that a person is free of controlled substances, we offer that too, the ability to arrange for lab based drug drug testing or on site drug testing.
Wow.
And then I think to your earlier thoughts, you know, people make claims on the resumes and some people fudge it a little bit.
(laughs)
You know, you want to know, you want to confirm what's what's valid around what they're claiming on the resume. So we also have education verification, going to school, as well as, their employment verification. So the recent places they worked, how long they were there, what title they held, and so on. So all those things are available as a set of add ons that you can add on to your core background check that you're running.
That's fantastic. So almost like ala carte, so you would have the main and then depending on the role, you can do those individual add ons as on an as needed basis.
You got it.
Super. So in regards to Checkr what are some top ways that Checkr makes the background checks easy and seamless? You kind of lead in with a lot of this, I feel. But can we dig in a little bit deeper?
Yeah. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to sind the praises of Checkr because you know I'm going to do that!
Yes (laughs)!
We talk to our customers a lot, we survey them a lot. And we do regular NPS surveys, that's net promoter score to understand how they're feeling about their experience with Checkr and ask them a lot of questions to understand what's really working well for them what they love, and where we can improve. And, based on that, we've been able to identify our best strengths, and I have a way of referring to what I believe are our best drinks, I call it fast, smooth and safe.
And I'll just quickly go through a few of
Nice. those so fast, you know, fast is all about helping hiring teams fill more roles with the fastest background checks, we are literally the fastest in the industry. And we've been able to benchmark to show that. 97% of our customers say that their background check turnaround time is faster with Checkr than it was with their previous provider. And then in terms of the kind of stats around speed, 84% of our checks are ready in
less than 15 minutes. And 89% of the checks that people run on our platform are ready, meaning the background check report is ready in under an hour. So you're talking lightning speed for the vast majority of checks that are run. And we maintain this speed while processing about 35 million checks per year. So we're talking about massive volume, even some of the very largest companies hiring thousands of workers a year, such as Uber, for example.
Who hires a lot of drivers on your platform on a
Yeah. Right. regular basis, use Checkr to support that volume, and really do this at scale and, and at speed as well. So that speed and the fast aspect. And then smooth. What smooth is all about is helping our customers to modernize and automate their hiring operations, i.e. save them time and save the manual
Save them a lot of time and work. And we talked work and just help them be more efficient. 90% of our customers say that checker has simplified their daily work. And we've got this, in my opinion, streamlined user experience. Our customers city love all of our different automated workflows, which many of which just don't exist in other background check types of service providers.
earlier about automating the adjudication process of like making sense of a background check report and then being able to consistently make a decision in a fair in a compliant way.
Right.
Based on what you see in that report, we have a lot of workflows that help make that easier for hiring teams. And I mentioned that filtering so that they only see the types of charges that they actually care about for that role, so that they can make decisions quicker and more consistently. And then safe is all about helping companies to maximize accuracy and compliance with every hire they make. So they're able to set up those fine grained filters to ensure fair
and inclusive hiring. And we also have compliance really built into our products so that every decision that they make based on a background check report is safeguarded by compliance at the local level. So, different counties and states and geographies of the US have a lot of different types of laws related to making these types of hiring decisions. And it's a lot for a business owner or an HR person to have to worry
about. So we literally got a built into our product, that awareness of those evolving laws and regulations at the local level. So that ensures safety for our customers to so fast, smooth and safe I like to say.
I love that. And to be honest with you the fast portion, I'm blown away by it, because, being in HR and recruiting, I mean, we work with so many clients that provide or want our potential candidates to do background checks. And it brings hiring to a halt, because you can't move forward until the background checks are cleared. And normally, I mean, that's taking some of our clients three days to a week, in those three days to a week, candidates can get another offer and be out of there.
There's a lot at stake!
There's a lot at stake there. So, listening and hearing you say in under an hour, I'm like, Oh, my goodness, so many of my clients could be utilizing this in such a better way because of that. I mean, we've lost some candidates with some issues like this, because the background check takes such a long time, or we're up against a deadline where a candidate might have another offer on the
table. And they need to give their answer in 24 to 48 hours, well, my background check doesn't clear in 24 to 48 hours, we're looking at sometimes three to four days. So that window of time, it's like the most important window of time.
Yeah it is.
So to hear that the how fast you guys can you all can turn it around is a phenomenal, phenomenal for me to know but also for us to share with our clients, too.
Yeah, this reminds me of a survey, we did a job seekers about a year ago, we surveyed thousands of job seekers. And we asked them, What are the top things that would cause you to abandon a conversation with a prospective employer? The number one reason was because the hiring process takes too long.
Yes.
You know they may be excited about a particular prospective employer. But if the whole thing is taking too long, if it's bottlenecked by a background check, they'll start looking for their plan B and you can lose a great candidate.
Yeah, absolutely. And then kind of segwaying into my next question, what are some of the things that can slow down the background check process?
Yeah, one thing is the individual counties that are involved in an individual background check.
Still on cement blocks? (laughs)
A big part of the process of doing a criminal
Right. search and you know searching a prospective employees' criminal record, is looking at the county level, because most crimes are
Pretty much. They're still doing things the way prosecuted in county courts. So that's a really important part of a criminal background check. And there are about 3,200 counties in the US. And each of them has really different levels of operational and technological sophistication with which they house and process criminal records. Some of them are really modernized, very digitally oriented, and others not so much. they've done them for decades.
Wow.
And for the old school courthouses, it's still necessary for all consumer reporting agencies, including Checkr, to use, believe it or not, courthouse runners, like people who actually physically go into the courthouse and request that information, you know, stand at the front desk of the courthouse and have to manually retrieve the data.
Ah man.
So we have to do that too, just like every other consumer reporting agency. But where Checkr really shines is Once that data is retrieved, even from those sort of old school courthouses, that's where we really are able to show that we're the fastest because traditional background checks services, they may or may not have some software offerings, but they all rely heavily on human workers. Usually those workers are offshore workers in low cost countries.
Mmm hmm.
They rely on them to carry out all their searches on different criminal background records or verifications that they need to do so those workers are poring over courthouse and DMV records. They're trying to make sense of all this obscure and inconsistent language that's used to describe crimal charges are driving incidents or what have you. And, you know, the reliance on humans is a problem. It's slow, it's error prone. And of course, it's subject to human biases.
Yeah.
So, you know, we pride ourselves not only on our speed, but on the consistency with which background checks are carried out on our platform. You know, 99% of background checks in our platform are automated after the data is retrieved. And that is a big driver of that speed of that 89% of checks being ready in under an hour.
Wow. That's amazing. Absolutely amazing what you guys are able to accomplish in a short amount of time, really. When you're putting these into place, and background checks into place with different companies, what are some common questions or concerns that candidates even maybe come to the table with about background checks?
Yeah, as you can imagine getting or if you've ever had a background check done on you as an employee.
Oh yeah (laughs).
It can be an anxiety ridden experience. Kind of wondering like, what are they going to see?
Yeah.
And candidates, understandably, tend to have a lot of questions. Number one, they're reasonably concerned about how long a background check we'll take. They may be weighing other options, right? So they want to know how fast this is going to go. They're also curious about why particular information is being requested.
Yeah.
They may be worried about how an aspect of their background is going to look to an employer. So they may be eager to share their side of the story, their perspective. And I think most hiring teams and most companies genuinely care about the candidates experience. But from what I've seen, do the the legacy background check services that they use care about the kid
experience? Not really. That's been a question that, that I've gotten in hearing some of the horror stories of companies who've worked with some of our competitors, frankly.
Yeah.
From what I've seen in some of these background checks services and provide a little more than a form for a candidate to fill out. They've failed to build tools that help candidates fully understand the background check process. And that means that candidates are left waiting and wondering when they're going to hear back.
Yup.
They're left in the dark about why certain info is being requested. They might receive a phone call from an HR person at the company if more info is needed. But then they probably have to go back to their desktop computer because they can't complete that request via their mobile phone, which is in many candidates case, what they prefer to use. In contrast to that Checkr's candidate experience
Yeah. really needs candidates where they are on mobile devices in ways that really resonate with what candidates are worried about or wanting to learn more about. Candidates are guided through the process with SMS and email prompts. And the data that candidates are asked to share is kept only to what's absolutely necessary, which increases the conversion rate of the candidate doing what the employer is
asking them to do. And candidates get this comprehensive candidate portal that has the real time status so they can get an estimate for how longs it takes to complete. It's amazing.
FAQs, direct access to our candidate experience team, we've got a whole support team that is dedicated to answering the candidate's questions. One other thing about the candidate experience I'll mention that it's one of my favorite features on our platform, that's called candidate stories. So candidates can proactively tell their story around individual charges on their background check report, providing more context to inform
adjudication decision. And this isn't done just by like sending an email to the HR person or the hiring manager at the company. Instead it's all done within their candidate portal.
Mmm hmm.
It shows up in line in the background check report so you can get that extra context as you're looking at a consider charge in that background check report and even better rebuilt this Grammarly integration, where as the candidate is typing out that extra context around the charge and their background, they can present it in a really professional way with good grammar and spelling the Grammarly helps them to really put a great face on their explanation of a given
individual charge. So we think that that better empowers candidates too.
Absolutely it does. And it's it's almost, you know, a lot of candidates fear talking about the past and fear what might come up in a background check right out of the gate with a potential employer. So I feel by having stories like this, or the availability to tell their story is so important for the candidate experience. That way, it's also them putting the story out there for whoever the viewer
is, right? It's not a phone call, which that can be awkward, because you don't really know the person that you're telling your story to. But would you suggest for candidates out there to put it out on the table right out of the gate? If they know something's going to come up on their background check? Or is it something that candidates should wait to see if it comes up on their background checks, then tell that story?
Good question. The candidate, if they request it, which they usually do, will receive the results of the background check report at the same time the employer will receive it.
Awesome.
The both receive a notification that's available.
Okay.
The candidate has the ability to then go in and enter in extra context, in order to, while the employer is looking at that report, as they see an individual charge, they can also see the the candidates side of the story or the context around that charge. So I do think it's beneficial for candidates, especially when there may be something that the employer wouldn't consider if they were to just see that charge by itself.
Yeah.
I think it's, it's worthwhile for the candidate to go in and fill that out proactively.
Absolutely.
So that by the time the the hiring manager or HR person get to reviewing the results, background check report, they'll see that extra perspective, or that extra story, right along with the rest of it with the rest of the report.
It's such an added bonus for the candidates and companies to be utilizing Checkr because I mean, we got so many clients that do background checks, but the candidate, the only thing that they hear is for me to say, Okay, your background check has cleared, so you're good to go. Like, there's nothing else that comes from that. So love the fact that you do really concentrate on not only your clients experience, but your candidates experience too. Because it's equally as important. Right?
Agreed. And, if they have a negative experience a that could result in them not choosing the employer if they are extended an offer, and B even if they move ahead with starting the employment relationship that can leave a bad taste in their mouth, right? So it's all about building the relationship continually from the very first time a candidate is engaged all the way through it until they're a happy employee.
So awesome, Bryan. I want to kind of lead into another question with different laws across the country, let's talk about the differing marijuana laws across the country now. How does that affect drug tests and background checks state to state or for even for potentially a candidate that is maybe in a state that it is legal, but maybe headquarters for a company is in a different state? And they're working remotely. How does that all differentiate? How is it all affected now?
Yeah, that has been a tricky area that one laws and been a tricky for hiring teams to navigate. Checkr's adjudication tools do make that much easier. And I'll kind of explain what I mean. In the case of marijuana laws, the main thing that our customers have to ask yourself is, how important is a candidate's prior marijuana conviction to us the employer,
as as a company? Do we think that a candidate having a prior marijuana conviction is going to detract from their ability to do the job well and to do it safely? That really is ultimately the decision regardless of whether that employer happens to be based in a state where marijuana has been decriminalized or is fully legal for recreational use or maybe
remains totally illegal. In any of those cases whatever is the current policy or laws in place in that state, it is ultimately the decision of the employer as to whether they care or don't care about whether a person has a prior marijuana conviction. But Checkr's like fine grain adjudication, filters or workflows can really help with, you know, getting on the same page internally about what what their policy or their philosophy is there and then applying that consistently, as they screen
candidates. For example, those filters allow them to completely filter out marijuana convictions if they choose or to flag them for consideration. And they can set the filters differently, for example, for marijuana possession convictions versus marijuana distribution.
Okay.
The the latter possibly being taken much more seriously by certain employers, but yeah, ultimately up to the individual employer. But we helped save them time in kind of carrying out those decisions by letting them focus only on the aspects of the candidates record that they care about. And this also reduces bias because they are consistently applying those filters. Rather than having like an individual person make a decision based on the primary
one conviction here. And then two months later, a different person makes a different decisions based on their own sort of worldview on that issue, and so on. So that consistency I think, is really important to a lot of our customers. This brings up by the way, an aspect of Checkr that I really hold dear. It's one of the reasons why I chose Checkr and that is fair chance hiring.
I'm so happy are talking about this. Awesome.
Yeah, and this is really something that we have been very public about as being our core mission and philosophy as a company.
Yeah.
It's been one of the ways that we really stood out in the market. And it's something that we have built into our own product. And we're actively working with our customers in discussing and implementing their own organization. So in a nutshell, our mission is to build a fairer future. And that mission is all about fair chance hiring. Fair chance hiring is the practice of hiring people
with criminal records. It's built on the belief that everyone, regardless of their background, has the right to be fairly assessed for a role that
they're qualified to hold. And by practicing fair chance hiring, companies can find a pool of qualified diverse talent with a wide range of experiences, ultimately leading to better business outcomes for them They're able to open the aperture and consistently apply their philosophies on which charges and in a background in a person's background matter to them and matter less to them in terms of the hiring decision. So we're building fair chance hiring and fairness into our
product. And we're reflecting the fair chance philosophy in our own hiring, we have a lot of employees at Checkr that have fair chance type of backgrounds.
Wow.
And we're working with our customers to help them implement for change in their own hiring strategy. So something that I'm proud to say one key reason why I'm proud to be part Checkr.
That's something that has always struck out to me from knowing multiple people at Checkr and being a part of a lot of the speaking engagements and just learning more about Checkr internally. That, you know, it has stood out, it's, you're giving individuals the opportunity to have another chance to really show up as their best version of themselves in the present and not holding their past against them.
Exactly.
And I think that that's really important for a lot of individuals out there especially because they want to change, they want to take a different path and come into the professional world and build themselves in their present moments, not from what has happened in the past. And I just, I think that's such an awesome program. It says a lot
about Checkr as a whole. It says a lot about, I don't know if it's the support that comes in for candidates, and then being able to work with so many different businesses out there to carry that through, into their hiring and onto their teams. So just I mean, it makes me feel so happy that companies are out there doing that and allowing better chances to come into people's worlds in order to make a difference and shift onto a different path.
Thank you. That's well said, yeah, we've seen firsthand how people with Fair Chance backgrounds who work for Checkr are the most successful employees at Checkr. They tend to have higher retention rates.
Wow.
They tend to be promoted frequently. They're in a lot of different roles across charter from sales to support even engineering.
Wow.
So, you know, we've seen firsthand how people who have paid their debt to society and are encountering challenges as they get out there and get back into the work world have that motivation and drive to excel in their roles with Checkr.
Absolutely awesome. Last question, too. Is it difficult to introduce that idea to other clients or companies?
It depends. Interesting.
Yeah.
Often when we mentioned fair chance, hiring, our very first conversation with a prospective customer, it really resonates for them. In a few cases, they've told us that it was the reason, we walk them through our other capabilities of our platform and why we, you know, we think we're great in this market. But they actually have told us, okay, we ultimately chose Checkr because your mission really resonated
with us. And we want to implement that in our own company as part of their DEI type initiatives, right?
Yup.
Others, frankly, they care less about it. And it's really not what they're looking for, not what they have in mind, when they're selecting a background check provider.
Right.
Over time, we've been able to, you know, start that conversation with them. And in some cases, depending on their level of, I guess you call it like risk aversion as a company, they may or not be accepting of the idea of hiring folks with criminal backgrounds.
But even among those companies that have embraced fair chance hiring, you see variation in individual charges, where they will choose to move forward with a candidate, even in the presence of those charges, obviously, that's going to be matter differently to different types of companies.
Yeah.
We have seen a lot of traction working with individual customers of ours to implement hiring and it's something that many HR managers, business owners just feel a connection to, in this otherwise, frankly, somewhat dry world of background checks.
Right (laughs). This is fantastic, Bryan.. So just to kind of wrap up this amazing conversation, can you share with us, the Top5 Ways Checkr Makes Background Checks Easy and Seamless?
Yeah, I will say I will name the speed.
Perfect.
I will name the time savings. I will name the compliance that our customers get by working with our platform. I will name fairness being built into our platform so they can avoid bias in their hiring decisions.
Love that.
And then I think this is number five, if I get this right, I will name the people of Checkr. You know, I've been talking about it a lot about our technology, right? And yes, we are really strong in the technology aspects. But I think of us as a true technology company in a world of services companies who are throwing people at every problem that they have to solve. And that's one way we're strong, but our people are fantastic and we actually are rated very highly with regard to the services and
the support that we provide. So, Checkr's our support team is often one reason why we have such a high net net promoter score. And we really stand out among some of the other competitors in the space and having expert support people who are able to walk hiring managers and HR folks from recruiters through what can be a tricky area from the standpoint of compliance related decisions or other technical considerations and so on. So, I name the people at Checkr as number five.
Awesome. And I have to say everybody that I have come in contact with at Checkr, it's been absolutely a pleasure. And everybody just comes across like they love their job at Checkr. They love their team. They love the mission. And so it shows, it definitely shows through the course of all of your Top5, you know, coming in strong with the people at Checkr that helped make all of this happen. So
kudos to you and Checkr. It's such a great have such a great experience, being able to get to know the team members and really get to learn what Checkr does.
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak about background checks and Checkr and all that Matthew and yeah, we've got an awesome culture and love working with our costumers.
Perfect Bryan, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to meet with us today.
Not sure thing. Thank you so much. Of course.
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