Why Manufacturing Employers Need Automated Background Check Tools

Hiring the right candidates quickly and efficiently is crucial in the manufacturing industry. Skilled, reliable, and trustworthy team members can help you safeguard assets, maintain product quality, and prioritize workplace safety.

Background checks provide valuable insights into a candidate's history and qualifications, so you can make more informed hiring decisions. A recent Checkr survey found that large manufacturers primarily run background checks to improve the quality of hire. However, many face challenges with background check efficiency, making filling roles in a competitive talent landscape more difficult.

Manufacturing companies need team members who are properly trained and qualified in order to mitigate risk, especially in safety-sensitive roles, and meet key business objectives. That’s perhaps why our survey found that elevating the quality of hire is the top priority for large manufacturing employers.

Background checks can help. In fact, 87% of surveyed manufacturers have confidence that background checks improve their quality of hire.

Percentages may not total 100% due to rounding.

One crucial way manufacturers ensure background checks are helping them hire the best candidates is by creating consistent screening packages for every role—and leveraging technology that makes it easy for their TA team to select the right set of screenings with one click through their background check platform or an ATS integration.

Tools that make it simple to consistently order the correct (and compliant) screenings for each role are especially essential when you have a dispersed hiring team or hire across multiple jurisdictions. This built-in efficiency boost sets the groundwork for identifying candidates who are qualified for a position.

The most common screenings used by large manufacturers that partner with Checkr are:

Our survey found that manufacturing employers are among the least confident in their background check efficiency. Only 58% said their process is extremely or very efficient, while 19% said it is not efficient.

Manufacturing employers primarily measure background check efficiency by the accuracy of results, followed by turnaround time and cost per check. Based on the low confidence in efficiency, it’s not surprising that these same areas are causing the most challenges for manufacturers. Concerns about the accuracy of background checks, the time it takes to run a background check and get results, and the cost of background check vendors are the biggest pain points.

Most surveyed manufacturing employers (70%) agree that improvements to the background check process would positively impact their talent acquisition ROI and help reduce hiring costs. They reported that creating a more efficient background check process and adding a dedicated team or team member responsible for background checks would be the most impactful improvements to their background check process.

Large manufacturing employers are among the most likely to have a fully manual adjudication process—and one of the least likely to have any automated adjudication actions. For example, 35% of staffing employers use what they consider to be a fully automated adjudication process, compared to only 21% of manufacturing employers.

Start by asking background check providers about what automated adjudication tools they support, and how your team can build intelligent rulesets that drastically reduce the amount of manual work and evaluation required by your team. Automated workflows that clearly indicate whether a record needs review—or whether a candidate’s report is clear—based on your requirements can help you reduce adjudication turnaround times right away. And, tech-forward screening providers are taking these automation capabilities a step further.

Choose a background check partner that offers you the ability to create conclusive eligibility assessments for each unique role by inputting internal eligibility criteria. By setting criteria based on your compliance and policy requirements, you get access to an assessment tool that can automatically:

And all in a matter of seconds.

Your team should have a transparent view of which candidates have been marked eligible or escalated, enabling fast, consistent decision-making and a smoother adverse action flow. These types of eligibility assessments are grounded in your team’s background check requirements and are visible for human review, helping you maintain compliance while creating the most efficient adjudication process.

Automation programs like this can help open up hidden talent pools, too. 68% of large manufacturing employers who use Checkr Assess have automatically unblocked a candidate during the adjudication process.

Manufacturing employers have a significant opportunity to modernize background check processes with AI-enabled solutions—and most survey respondents are looking for strategies to level-up their programs. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of large manufacturers agree they’re more likely to choose to work with a background check vendor that offers AI tools than those that do not.

Checkr’s modern background check platform offers a wide range of AI-powered solutions that help manufacturing employers achieve greater end-to-end efficiency so they can hire high-quality talent, faster. Get in touch today to learn more.

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About the author

Jen Dewar writes about HR technology with a focus on educational content for HR, talent acquisition, and DEIB professionals. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion, lifelong learning and development, and treating people like people throughout the candidate and employee experiences.