How Small Businesses Can Streamline Hiring and Onboarding

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As we look ahead to 2021, your business might be considering adding a few new positions or reworking your structures. Recruiting and training new employees is exciting—it’s always a good sign when you can grow your team. However, the process of finding and onboarding the best candidate can be tedious and stressful. From reviewing applications to interviewing to employment background checks to onboarding, hiring managers must manage dozens of tasks and documents while communicating with the applicants.

At One Source, we believe employment background checks, hiring and onboarding can be streamlined with a few tricks and tools. We’re here to help you find the best candidates quickly and efficiently. Below are a few ways you can simplify and organize hiring and onboarding in 2021.

Recruit in the Right Places

Small businesses may think they need to cast a wide net in order to get the attention of potential candidates, but sometimes the opposite is true. You can save both money and time by advertising your job openings in the places that make the most sense for you.

Take a moment to discuss with your hiring team what kind of candidate you’re looking for. Then consider where they will most likely encounter your job listings. Do you need to post on a large job search site? Can you share your job opportunities through local industry associations? Could you use your professional network to share information through word of mouth and referrals?

By focusing on your recruitment efforts, your hiring team will have less to juggle and find more quality leads than if you post a job opening on multiple sites.

Automate as Much as You Can

Save time and get more organized by relying on technology to manage to hire wherever possible. You can build online applications tailored to your job requirements through Google Forms or a hiring management app. Personalizing online applications can give you a greater understanding of your applicants before the interview stage. Online applications also make it easy to organize materials.

You can also streamline background checks with the help of One Source. Our online platform makes it so easy to keep track of all your employment background checks. Plus, we present background check results in an easy-to-interpret format and our team is always happy to help answer questions. You don’t have to spend time worrying about what screening results mean and focus on finding the best applicants.

After the Employment Background Check, Prep Your Onboarding

Once you’ve confirmed your new hire, you can turn your attention to making them feel welcome and setting them up for success. They will feel more confident in their new position if they spend their first day learning about your company’s function, not doing a bunch of paperwork.

Streamline the onboarding paperwork by using HR software. With software, you can build digital onboarding packets that have all the paperwork ready to go at any time. This will allow your new hire to digitally sign all their paperwork quickly and efficiently.

If you have any questions about how to maximize your hiring or streamline your background check process, please reach out to One Source’s Client Relations Team. Check out our background check services as well in the Solutions tab.

One Source’s Guide to Simplifying the Individualized Assessments Process

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In 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published new guidance for how employers should respond to arrests and conviction records on background checks. These rulings are over eight years old. However, they have a ton of influence over how employers can ethically manage their hiring practices. The key to these EEOC rulings is a practice called individualized assessment process.

The individualized assessment process allow candidates with criminal records to explain how their record will not affect their job. Many people with criminal records can excel in certain roles, and individualized assessment exists to give them a fair opportunity for work.

The goal of individualized assessment is to give those with criminal records the chance to move beyond their past while also protecting employers. Paying specific attention to applicants who would like to contextualize their arrests or convictions does take more time and resources. However, your extra time could give someone the opportunity to start a new life while keeping those whose crimes would interfere with their work away from your organization.

Individualized assessments are all about the balance between giving all candidates a fair chance and protecting your organization. It is ethical and honorable to ensure you give every candidate a fair chance, but there are ways to simplify the individualized assessment process.

The easiest way to streamline the individualized assessment process is to know what to ask when a candidate has a criminal record. Prior to an interview, you should evaluate the nature and gravity of the candidate’s offense, determine how long ago the offense occurred and consider whether the offense has any relevance to the job they applied for. These three considerations are called the “Green factors” after the court case in which they were created. You can learn specific offenses and when they happened in the candidate’s One Source background check.

Once you have established each of the “Green factors” and discussed them with your team, you can then open up the conversation to the job applicant. Ask them to provide context for the offenses in question and give them a chance to explain themselves.

The best thing you can do to hire ethically and fairly while still keeping your organization safe is to listen to your applicants. Not all criminal records should leave someone unemployable forever. If the crime doesn’t relate to the nexus of the position, they could certainly excel.

You can stay efficient and give all applicants a fair chance with tools offered by One Source. Our online portal offers places for applicants to provide context for their records and a place for you to see if they meet your company requirements. With our help, you can offer individualized assessments to those who need it without slowing down your hiring process. One Source is committed to helping you find the right employees in a timely manner while hiring ethically. If you have any questions about background check ethics or hiring practices, please reach out to the One Source Client Relations team.

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Get to Know the One Source Certified Contractor Program

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Generally, it’s a given to run background checks on all full-time employees. Employees get widespread access to your organization’s information, facilities and trade secrets, so it only makes sense to screen them before they join the team. But what about contractors? They are not full-time team members with access to all of your information, but they do get to spend time in your facilities and networks. Even if you don’t have time to run full-scale background checks on all your contractors, it is worth it to screen them in some way, and we can help through our Certified Contractor Program.

Whether a contractor is troubleshooting your computers, working with your electrical system or renovating your office space, you should be able to fully trust them with your property and information.

At One Source, we offer a simple way to ensure the contractors you hire will be reliable and safe through the One Source Certified Contractor (OSCC) program. This program looks into the backgrounds of contractors to see if they meet a set of standards identified by One Source. Should the contractor fail to meet these standards, they will not receive access to your site. And you’ll save time because neither you nor the contractor have to decipher full background checks.

We know not every organization and site are the same, so we offer a few different levels of to the OSCC program.

  • Level 1: A full criminal background check
  • Level 2 and higher: A full criminal background check plus a drug test

All contractors must be certified against a set of standards , which you can review here. These standards were built by background check professionals and are intended to keep you, your organization and the contractors as safe as possible. Recently, a school district in Omaha, Nebraska entrusted the OSCC program to screen contractors who would have access to their school facilities. Through our screenings, we prevented more than one registered sex offender from being granted site access at a school.

The OSCC is part of the many ways we are committed to keeping our community safe. And the best part of the OSCC is that it is completely free for you to use. In order to run OSCC background checks on contractors, all you need is a contractor’s OSCC credentials. Enter those credentials into the search bar on the OSCC Search page, and One Source will check them to the highest standard.

Make sure everyone entering your organization to work is thoroughly vetted with the OSCC program as well as One Source’s comprehensive background check options. Learn more about how we can provide proper background checks for everyone in your organization by browsing our blog or by reaching out to our team today.