Hiring Still Slow? Now is the Time to Review Your Employment Screening Process

March 7, 2011 in HR Best Practices

 

The BLS Employment Situation Summary continues to paint an anemic economic picture.

Economists continue to talk about a “jobless recovery,” with many employers focusing on productivity gains, as opposed to hiring, to manage any increases in business.

What’s the upside?

Well, if your company isn’t focused on hiring right now, it may be the perfect time for you to review and improve your employment screening process.  Doing so could help you:

  • increase compliance;
  • reduce theft, fraud and accidents;
  • prepare you to make even better hires when the time comes.

As experts in employment screening for food & beverage executives and professionals, The Kinsa Group recommends taking the following steps to reduce the potential for negligent hiring and discrimination:

Consult with your attorney. If you hire on your own, you should have your legal counsel review your screening process to ensure you’re complying with all current legislation and hiring regulations.

Be consistent. Your screening process should be the same for all candidates within comparable job descriptions.  If you do a background check on one production manager, you should also conduct the same background check with candidates for all similar supervisory and management positions.  In addition to preventing anyone from “slipping through the cracks,” a uniform process helps minimize your exposure to litigation.

Use social media carefully. Social media has made access to candidate information fast, easy and free.  But if you intend to use this publicly available information to screen candidates, make sure that you obtain written permission and follow all EEOC and FCRA provisions.

Formalize and document your process. If you don’t already have one in place, now is the time to standardize, formalize and document your background screening policies and procedures.  Creating a formal policy makes screening more effective, efficient and consistent.  Furthermore, should a problem arise, your ability to show that you applied fair, consistent and documented screening processes will limit your legal exposure.

Reduce your risks and make better quality hires with Kinsa.

Hiring top food & beverage professionals – honest, high performers who do what they claim they can do – is critical to your organization’s continued success.  Kinsa’s full complement of search and assessment options can help ensure that success.  Here are just a few of the benefits our services provide:

  • Transfer employment screening risks such as discrimination and negligent hiring.
  • Save time and eliminate process bottlenecks employment screening creates.
  • Hire the best food & beverage talent available.  We go beyond typical background and reference checks to create the best possible matches.  Kinsa evaluates candidates’ performance in the specialty skills of the position, results achieved in past positions, and overall predictors of success.  Online behavioral testing is done for Priority Searches, and an all-day face-to-face interview can be performed by our partners in Industrial Psychology for Retained Searches.

Work with Kinsa and your hiring decisions can be made with confidence – guaranteed.