Checkr Year in Review: 2022

In 2022, the Checkr team invested in product enhancements to bring flexibility and transparency to the background check process for our customers and their candidates. While we always believed in the impact and potential of faster and fairer background checks, our customers have accomplished more in the past 12 months than we could have imagined.

We want to say thank you to all of our customers for your continued partnership and collaboration as we build the future of work together. Before we jump into the new year,  we’d like to celebrate a few of those accomplishments.

This past year, Checkr customers large and small have increased efficiencies in their hiring processes while providing excellent candidate experiences. Below are just a few customer highlights from 2022:

BridgeBio is a biotechnology company that finds, develops, and delivers breakthrough medicines for genetic diseases. In 2022, BridgeBio increased their headcount by 70%, leveraging Checkr’s mobile-friendly candidate portal to send background checks to new hires with the click of a button. Background checks came back within an average of 48 hours, empowering the BridgeBio team to hire quickly while maintaining a seamless candidate experience.

Hyer is a leading on-demand labor app powering the gig economy by connecting people to opportunities and businesses to workers in real time. With Checkr fully integrated into their app, they have reduced background check turnaround time to within one day on average for the over 3,000 checks run each month. In turn, Hyer has seen a 200% increase in high-quality users since 2021.

Angi brings together the expertise of Angie’s List and the technology of Home Advisor to match thousands of customers every week with trusted home services professionals. With over 200,000 background checks run annually, Checkr provides automation that has helped Angi increase efficiency in their hiring and onboarding processes. By cutting the time it took for an agent to review a candidate's criminal record, Angi was able to reduce their headcount costs by 20%.

Customers were able to leverage the flexibility, speed, and agility of Checkr to grow their hiring programs and build strong teams.

While they were developing world-class hiring programs, we were busy working on the products and features needed to scale those programs.

In the past 12 months, we've doubled-down on making customer-guided product decisions. Thanks to the feedback we received from our customer advisory boards, product feedback sessions, and survey responses, we made the following product enhancements:

Editable packages. To ensure that customers are running the comprehensive screenings suitable for the roles they’re hiring for, we implemented editable packages. From the Checkr dashboard, customers can now quickly and easily add a variety of screenings to their existing packages.

Investment in partnership and integration networks. This year, we’ve continued to invest in our partnerships and integrations with organizations like FreshTeam, GoCo, Ashby, Pinpoint and BambooHR as well as industry leaders in SOC2 automation like Vanta, Drata, and Secureframe. That way, customers can access their hiring data in one place with the speed required to reduce friction in the candidate experience.

Transparent pricing. Checkr unveiled a new pricing page with visible price breakdowns to bring clarity to the purchasing experience. Now, customers can understand the cost behind various background check packages and pick the best option to fit their goals. Furthermore, the new price estimator offers real-time cost updates as customers build their background check packages. We also added a new passthrough fee page for increased transparency.

Improvements to the international user experience. We made a number of enhancements for customers hiring outside the US, including self-service onboarding for international packages and a new Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) screening in Canada (also known as Driver’s License Verification). We continued to make investments in optimizing the candidate experience — introducing French, German, and Spanish to the candidate apply flow, a new country-specific welcome screen providing candidates with more context about their background check application, and European timezone and language support.

Professional license verification. This year we launched professional license verification (PLV) in the US, enabling customers hiring for regulated or specialized roles to verify candidates licenses and credentials. Checkr’s AI-powered platform can automatically verify credentials across many industries.

Updates to your Checkr Dashboard. We introduced a number of new enhancements to the Checkr Dashboard, focused on providing clarity and transparency. Your dashboard now provides new context around certain searches and enhancements to expanded report insights. These enhancements help you better assess the overall state of your background checks and reduce delays in your hiring pipeline.

We can’t wait for another year of product innovation, developing the people infrastructure that will help employers scale hiring with speed and fairness.

Our mission is to build a fairer future of work by designing technology to create opportunities for all. Over the last year, our mission has taken on new meaning and scale.

In 2021, we established Checkr.org to mobilize the most effective solutions and actualize our mission of fair chance hiring. This year, Checkr.org has been dedicated to realizing our mission to build a fairer future; a future where everyone, regardless of their background, has a fair chance to thrive in the workforce. We are eager to share our mission updates from 2022:

Candidates unblocked. In 2022, Checkr technology helped to unblock 2.2 million candidates from the barriers of a background check. Tools like Checkr Assess enabled customers to fairly assess their candidates’ backgrounds and in turn, open the doors to employment for over 2 million justice-impacted individuals.

Fair Chance Dashboard. Added directly into the Checkr platform this fall, the Fair Chance Dashboard provides companies with an innovative way to see first-hand how their own fair chance hiring data stacks up to other companies. The dashboard also includes educational and inspirational content to help fully embrace fair chance hiring practices. To date, over 6,000 Checkr customers have engaged with the Fair Chance Dashboard.

Expungements. Checkr’s first-of-its-kind Expungements solution offers a fully automated process for candidates with eligible criminal records or arrests to be scrubbed from their record. To date, 1,644 candidates are engaged for end-to-end expungement relief. In 2022, Checkr.org secured $500,000 in grant funds to support free expungements. The Expungements solution was recognized by Fast Company’s 2022 World Changing Ideas Award in both the corporate social responsibility and software categories.

Fair Chance Accelerator. Checkr.org launched their inaugural Fair Chance Accelerator at the end of 2022. A cohort-based initiative for Checkr customers and businesses to learn how to become fair chance employers, the program covers various topics, from its hiring benefits to implementing a plan. Each attendee walks away with a concrete understanding of fair chance hiring and the necessary steps to start a fair chance hiring program at their organization. At the end of the training, a Checkr representative will navigate each employer through the fair chance hiring process all the way to making their first fair chance hire. Fair Chance Accelerator events will continue to be hosted quarterly in the new year.

We want to express our gratitude to all of the customers leveraging Checkr’s technology to bring fairness to the hiring process.

Checkr has many feedback-driven product updates planned for 2023.

We will continue to make enhancements in global markets for customers who are hiring outside the US and for those that are hiring candidates in the US with international backgrounds. This includes new screenings, like International MVR with History in Canada (also known as Driver's Abstracts), and incorporating live, online ID verification within the background check application in the UK.

In early 2023, we will launch consumer permissioned employment verifications as the first step of a series of enhancements to our employment product. Customers can also expect a new fraud prevention product to help avoid unnecessary costs and hassle, and both new partnerships and improved integrations.

Checkr customers have navigated a continually changing labor market to build best-in-class hiring programs. Still, the potential ahead appears to be far greater. At Checkr, we’re eager to welcome in the new year alongside our customers and partners with optimism for the future.

Cheers to 2023, a year for all of us to continue to learn, listen, and grow together.