5 Benefits of Automated Background Checks for Hiring

Why? Because a bad hire could have serious consequences for your company…

You often feel that you simply don’t have enough time to do it all: from posting the vacancies, managing the candidate funnel, conducting the interviews and planning the onboarding process. With all these tasks, little time is left to perform criminal background checks or, worse still, sometimes due to the urgency of filling a certain vacancy, they are not even carried out… And we understand this because performing this task manually can take a lot of time and delay things.

But the good news is that automatic background checks allow you to streamline the recruitment process by automating the validation of candidates’ criminal records and ensuring that they have a clean history so that they can be trusted and contribute to the fulfillment of your company’s vision.

How much time would it save you to completely delegate this step of your recruitment workflow instead of having to do it manually? Are you checking enough or the right sources of information to ensure that applicants will not pose a risk to your company?

Before delving into the main benefits of background checks, we recommend that if you want to learn more about the topic and how they work, you check out this other article: What are Background Checks and how do they work in LATAM?

Benefits of Automatic Background Checks

We all know the multiple advantages that technology offers us to automate, simplify and make certain operations and processes more efficient. Automatic background checks are no exception, and for this reason they have become an essential tool for recruiters and recruitment companies, who greatly value the following advantages:

1. Use the time for more strategic matters

   A process that can take a recruiter from hours to days to complete can now be done in less than two minutes.
   How long does it take you to consult all those sources and databases manually? With automatic background checks, the same time you save on background verification can now be used efficiently to focus on more strategic and higher-value business aspects.

2. Save money in the short and long term

   Background checks represent a great short-term saving because they reduce operating costs by automating the process and, consequently, requiring less personnel and resources to carry out these manual and repetitive tasks.
   Money is also saved in the medium and long term because by conducting proper background investigations, the risks of occupational fraud, theft and possible legal consequences are mitigated.
   According to the 2020 ACFE Global Fraud Study, it is estimated that organizations lose 5% of their annual revenue due to fraud, which represents approximately $3.6 trillion in losses, according to data obtained from the survey conducted between January 2018 and September 2019.

3. Protect your brand and your customers

   One of the main advantages of Emptor’s background checks is that they can verify records in more than 500 public sources in a matter of seconds, to have a much more complete and accurate picture. So if no record was found in the automatic search for a particular candidate, it is unlikely that they will later become a problem for the company.
   A study revealed that in countries like Mexico, Chile and Argentina, more than 20% of convicted criminals are repeat offenders, meaning they had already committed other offenses in the past. And although there is no way to absolutely guarantee that your candidates will not end up involved in illegal or criminal activity, the truth is that conducting background checks is the first step to mitigate the risk and ensure that your customers do not have a bad experience.
   More than 20% of convicted criminals are repeat offenders. One of our clients is Didi, an app through which vehicles and taxis are rented for transportation. One of Didi’s priorities is to ensure the safety of passengers who request the service through their app. For this reason, they make sure to mitigate risks by verifying that their drivers have a clean and crime-free record.

4. Reduce human error with artificial intelligence

   At Emptor, we use an advanced artificial intelligence system whose algorithms are programmed with such precision and accuracy that human error is reduced by up to 99%, which occurs more frequently precisely in this type of manual and repetitive task.
   At Emptor, we believe that human potential should be focused on tasks and projects with much greater impact and significance for the company, and leave to technology those that can be fully automated.
   Additionally, in our process we do not leave the entire burden to technology, as in some cases, human judgment by our legal experts is required to determine whether there has been an error due to a name match with another person, or whether a certain flaw found represents a real risk for the company.
   For example, it is not the same to have had criminal activity as such, such as a kidnapping, as to have driven under the influence of alcohol.
   We always strive for a fair and equitable process where candidates are not unnecessarily disqualified, which has allowed us to have a 98% approval rate, the highest in the region.

5. Integrate it seamlessly into your recruitment workflow

   Some background check platforms like Emptor can be integrated through an API into the Applicant Tracking Systems you use, such as Greenhouse, which is one of the most popular.
   This will allow you to connect this step of the process to your recruitment workflow so that as soon as a new candidate submits their application, they are immediately sent to Emptor to perform their respective background check, and you can see the result even before interviewing them. All of this automatically.

Take the first step towards faster, safer and more efficient hiring

If you would like to experience these benefits and streamline your recruitment process, we recommend requesting a free demo so you can see for yourself why companies like Manpower, Kavak and Cornershop have chosen Emptor as their favorite tool for conducting background checks.

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