Assess Standard: Adjudication Optimization to Reduce Manual Review Bias

Adjudication is the process of reviewing a background check and determining if the candidate meets the company’s hiring guidelines. Many companies still manually adjudicate their reports which can be inefficient and error-prone. Each adjudication action can delay the hiring process and leave you vulnerable to risk.

Systems that surface a company’s adjudication rules within the platform generally help keep adjudication more consistent, which is why Checkr has built a suite of adjudication tools to help your team hire efficiently and enable compliance. We’re excited to announce our newest product, Assess Standard, to provide adjudication optimization to more customers than ever.

When Checkr launched Assess Premium in 2019, it quickly became the gold standard for adjudication optimization, even winning Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Award in the AI and Data category.

Assess Premium has been widely adopted by many of Checkr’s largest customers and had an immense impact in just a few short years, resulting in tens of millions in operational savings for these companies. In order to extend the advanced, machine-learning technology of Assess to even more customers, we created Assess Standard to offer adjudication optimization to additional Checkr customers.

Assess Standard is a paid, add-on service based in your Checkr dashboard. Once enabled, the tool allows you to create adjudication guidelines to filter all background check reports. Assess optimizes the manual adjudication process with a much faster and consistent lens. In fact, Assess Standard reduces bias by up to 90% by empowering your team to review reports through your selected uniform guidelines. If your company has seasonal spikes in hiring or orders more than 1,000 background checks a year, you’ll benefit greatly from Assess Standard.

When Assess Standard is enabled on your account, the first step is to select which guidelines your company will utilize to create your framework. Don’t worry, you don’t have to select all guidelines from square one. Assess Standard provides 13 Templated Guidelines which provide pre-set options for you to evaluate and decide from when setting up your adjudication framework. Templated Guidelines not only save time and help ensure consistency, they are also a powerful way to integrate fair chance hiring into your company’s recruitment efforts.

After your guidelines are created, all of your reports will begin filtering through Assess. At the top of your candidate funnel, all records are marked as “Review” by default. Then, based on the guidelines created, Assess Standard will mark irrelevant records as “Clear.” After the filters are applied, up to 70% less reports remain for manual review. Utilizing Assess not only enables you to spend fewer resources on adjudication, but also enables you to hire faster and fairer.

Adjudication can be a manual, time-intensive process that may subject you to legal risk if done inconsistently across different counties and their unique reporting methods. Assess Standard saves you time, increases your pool of eligible candidates, and helps you make fair, informed hiring decisions by automatically deemphasizing records you decide aren’t relevant.

Reach out to your assigned Account Manager to learn more and to add it to your account.

Nothing in Checkr’s Blog should be construed as legal advice, guidance, or counsel. Companies should consult their own legal counsel about their compliance responsibilities under the FCRA and applicable state and local laws. Checkr expressly disclaims any warranties or responsibility or damages associated with or arising out of information provided.