Each decade, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes an occupational outlook. It goes into great detail about each industry and occupation. Overall, the BLS expects total employment to increase by 20.5 million jobs between 2010 and 2020. While 88 percent of all occupations will experience growth, the fastest growth will occur in healthcare, personal care and social assistance, and construction. Other substantial increases will occur in education, predicted to be 1.8 million jobs; retail, 1.7 million jobs; and hotel/restaurants, 1 million jobs. Another area is miscellaneous services at 1.6 million jobs. That includes human resources, seasonal and temporary workers, and waste collection.

These historic employment levels make our current talent marketplace more competitive than ever, which means that productivity and streamlining your hiring processes wherever possible are imperative. Being able to move from attracting talent to candidate application to offer to hire quickly is crucial to keeping your talent pipeline stocked and your hiring funnel robust. When considering which areas to target for improving productivity, your recruiting technology should be front and center.

Now that technology integration for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) is more commonplace it makes for a more productive HR team (and company). Position codes are assigned to the right job requisitions and candidate information like background checks and drug tests are available inside of the ATS itself. This information is pushed through to the other HR platforms. This is especially important for example, if you are hiring drivers with specific compliance projects like the DOT. 

Why Integrate Background Screening With Your ATS

Integrating background screening with your ATS has many benefits for recruiting and human resource teams, including a better candidate experience, improved productivity, metrics and analytics, and better accuracy and compliance. Here are the five primary areas that can be improved by integrating your background screening with your ATS.

1. Improve candidate experience.This stems from a greater level of transparency in the background check process, candidates’ personal involvement in data collection, enhanced security with their personally identifiable information (PII), and legal compliance measures that protect candidates as much as their potential employer.
    
2. Fewer hiring bottlenecks and improved productivity. When background screening is integrated with your ATS, real-time background check report status is available within the ATS, increasing your team’s productivity. After a background check has been submitted, best-in-class screening providers can communicate synchronously with an ATS and provide real-time status of the background check. ATS providers typically display the status in a dashboard and from within an individual’s “candidate profile.” This functionality saves your HR team time because they won’t have to log in to your screening solution to check a candidate’s status.
    
3. Fewer errors, improved accuracy and compliance. Integrating background screening with your ATS adds efficiency to the document completion process and helps ensure compliance with the FCRA Disclosure and Authorization process. As described above, an ATS does not contain all of the information an employment screening solution obtains from candidates. While some ATS providers present an FCRA Disclosure and Authorization, without the additional data that best-in-class employment screening providers obtain via an applicant portal, an ATS cannot accurately determine all of the authorization forms and documents that may be relevant to the candidate.
    
4. The recruiter experience. This is an important one in terms of the HR or recruiting leader who is responsible for job offers as well as monitoring and managing the background check screening process. Your recruiters should be able to move from offer to background screen seamlessly, and integrating your ATS is key to doing so. Additionally, removing concerns about compliance means that your HR team can spend more time on high-touch tasks with candidates and less time checking for compliance or keeping up with ever-changing regulations.
    
5. Improved hiring metrics and analytics. When an ATS is integrated with a best-in-class employment screening provider, duplicate data entry on the part of your busy recruiting and HR team is eliminated. The integrity of candidates’ data is also improved, as it is securely transmitted to the screening provider exactly as it is stored by the ATS. The consistency of applicants’ information in your ATS and screening solution is important to ensure accuracy of their background check report, but it will also improve data integrity so you’re able to get more accurate hiring metrics and analytics.

Finally, you want to choose a best-in-class background screening vendor that understands ATS integration inside and out. Here’s an example of a start-to-finish integration for ATS screening from PreCheck:

How Integrated ATS-Screening Works With PreCheck

• From within the ATS, the employer triggers a background check with PreCheck
• The ATS securely sends the candidate’s data to PreCheck
• PreCheck emails the candidate instructions that link to a secure, web applicant portal
• The candidate logs into the applicant portal that has prepopulated info from the ATS, then provides additional data, and electronically signs all required authorization forms
• PreCheck conducts the candidate’s background check
• Real-time background check status, such as In Progress, Review and Complete is displayed on a dashboard within the ATS
• With single sign-on technology, the employer may click to be logged into their screening solution and view the candidate’s report