The Hospitality Background Check Playbook for High-Volume Seasonal Hiring
Large hospitality employers face many challenges, including record consumer demand, high employee turnover, and stiff competition for top talent. When filling open positions, top-notch TA teams must balance potentially conflicting demands. They need to hire quickly to keep up with seasonal hiring spikes, but must also thoroughly vet candidates to uncover top talent and promote a safe workplace for employees and customers. Background screenings are essential to meeting both needs.
Too often, however, background screenings act as a roadblock in hospitality hiring, causing unnecessary delays that can cost you qualified candidates. As candidates become choosier and background screening laws more complex, organizations still relying on outdated background check technology and manual processes risk falling further and further behind.
Modernizing your approach to background screenings can solve your hospitality hiring headaches despite fierce competition for qualified workers. In this playbook, we’ll share smart strategies and actionable tactics savvy hospitality employers use to succeed. Making these moves can help you run the rapid, candidate-friendly background checks you need to achieve your goals: hiring top-quality candidates faster at a lower cost.
Hospitality industry challenges
Top hospitality background check pain points
Top hospitality recruitment goals
Source: Checkr Every Check Counts survey (2024)
6 must-dos for the fastest, safest hospitality background checks
- Step 1: Streamline screenings with integrations
- Step 2: Create a convenient, mobile-first candidate experience
- Step 3: Simplify report ordering
- Step 4: Ensure fast, accurate data collection and report creation
- Step 5: Enable automated adjudication actions
- Step 6: Enlist tech tools that mitigate compliance risk
Step 1
Streamline screenings with integrations
Problem: Siloed background check applications
During peak hiring seasons, your team may be sorting applications and scheduling background screenings for hundreds or even thousands of candidates. When your background check solution doesn’t play well with the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), Human Resources Information System (HRIS), or Human Capital Management (HCM) platform you already use, it can cause costly delays in your screening process.
Risks
- Lack of integration means more manual steps for busy HR teams, keeping them from higher-value tasks.
- Need for data re-entry across systems increases the potential for human error that slows screenings and may cause compliance risks.
- Inefficient workflows and clunky workarounds lead to screening backlogs that frustrate candidates and HR teams alike.
- Separate systems may send candidates confusing communications, such as repetitive or conflicting messages.
- Candidate trust erodes, causing increased dropoff and churn.
Solution: Implement integrations to streamline screenings
Integration with your existing tech stack should be one of your first priorities when choosing a background check provider. Look for a background check solution that offers out-of-the-box integrations with your preferred ATS, HRIS, or HCM platform, or one that features a flexible API solution you can customize to fit your workflow needs and brand.
Features to look for
Potential benefits
- Enhanced efficiency and accuracy
- Lower costs
- Swifter screening completion
- Consistent candidate communications
- Reduced candidate dropoff
- Faster hiring process
Does your response time make the grade?
Source: Hireology
Step 2
Create a convenient, mobile-first candidate experience
Problem: An outdated, clunky candidate interface
More than half (53%) of hospitality candidates primarily use smartphones for their job search. Hotel shuttle drivers, restaurant servers, and housekeepers who spend workdays on the go may need to complete job-search tasks like completing background check forms on their phones during breaks. Candidates also expect frequent communication to keep them in the loop on progress.
If your background check solution doesn’t provide transparency or run seamlessly on a smartphone, you may expect to lose top candidates to competitors with more modern methods.
Risks
- Outdated candidate interface negatively impacts your employer brand
- Hassle of creating passwords and usernames discourages candidates from starting the background check process
- Time-consuming process deters candidates from following through with background checks
- Candidates give up due to problems uploading documents or completing forms
- Limited candidate support puts the burden on your TA team to answer candidate questions
- Lack of transparency into screening status frustrates candidates, causing dropoff
Solution: A modern, intuitive candidate experience
When candidates can get help with their background check questions or updates on their report status quickly and easily on their mobile device, they may stay engaged instead of accepting other offers.
Features to look for
Potential benefits
- Increased engagement and brand impression
- Reduced candidate dropoff and keep candidates moving through the funnel
- Strengthened trust with frequent communications and transparent process
- Accelerated screenings by catching errors and omissions that can cause delays
- Personalized experiences by offering a variety of support channels
- Lighter workload for your team with candidate support off their plates
Step 3
Simplify report ordering
Problem: Ordering and reviewing reports takes too long
Hospitality positions range from service workers and drivers to mid-level managers or corporate executives, each requiring a different set of background screenings. Ordering and reviewing the wide variety of reports needed for hospitality candidates can be a laborious process. Decentralized hiring teams and myriad state and local background screening laws add to the complexity.
Risks
- Unnecessary expenditures and hiring delays from over-screening candidates.
- Compliance violations if required regulatory screenings aren’t conducted.
- Hassle of creating passwords and usernames discourages candidates from starting the background check process
- Lower quality of hire from incorrect, inconsistent, or incomplete background checks.
- Reduced productivity and efficiency from overburdened TA teams.
- Confusing or inconsistent reports that increase chance of human error during review.
Solution: Customized screening packages and one-click selection
Choose a background screening solution that offers time-saving features to streamline report ordering. A provider that offers customizable background check packages enables widely dispersed local managers to easily order, track, and manage background screenings for every unique role or region without a steep learning curve.
Features to look for
Potential benefits
- HR team members can order screenings with minimal training for rapid hiring.
- Automated exception detection catches mistakes and missing information.
- Confidence that your team orders the correct background checks according to employer policy and compliance regulations.
- Support screenings in multiple jurisdictions, states, and countries for all your locations.
- Reduce manual effort and enhance HR teams’ efficiency.
Step 4
Ensure fast, accurate data collection and report creation
Problem: Manual background check processes
Ongoing labor shortages and high turnover rates in the hospitality industry mean top candidates have their pick of places to work. If your background check process drags on too long because your provider isn’t returning reports fast enough, qualified candidates won’t wait around—they’ll move on to the next job offer.
Risks
- Data collection delays cost you qualified candidates.
- Losing contingent hire candidates after onboarding wastes time and money.
- Poor candidate experience damages your brand perception, making it even harder to hire.
- Reliance on manual research to compile reports causes delays and errors.
- Understaffing negatively impacts the customer experience.
- Poorly organized reports requiring manual steps to classify charges and records add to your team’s workload.
Solution: Automated data collection & centralized reporting
A background check partner that uses modern technology for data collection can source and classify records quickly and accurately, minimizing manual work for your team and helping you hire faster.
Features to look for
Potential benefits
- Reduce manual effort, giving your team time back for focused strategic work.
- Screen more candidates faster so even small TA teams can hire at scale.
- Ensure greater accuracy and completeness of reports to hire with confidence.
- Speed up background checks to keep top candidates engaged and your funnel filled.
- Avoid losing qualified candidates to competitors due to slow background checks.
Source: Checkr Every Check Counts survey (2024)
Step 5
Enable automated adjudication actions
Problem: Complex adjudication requires fully manual reviews
When your team is tasked with hiring for the myriad of roles that fill out a hospitality staff roster, from wait staff and housekeepers to supervisors and executives, you end up with reports featuring a wide range of background check types, formats, and adjudication requirements.
If your HR teams are dispersed across jurisdictions or states, each with their own laws regulating background screenings, manually filtering, reviewing, and adjudicating records becomes even more complicated and time-consuming.
Risks
- Time-consuming adjudication delays hiring and costs you top talent.
- Manual record review and decision-making increase the potential for human error and compliance risk.
- Inconsistent adjudication and adverse action processes could eliminate qualified candidates or let ineligible candidates through.
- Solutions with limited filtering options can unnecessarily reduce your talent pool.
Solution: Introduce automated, programmatic adjudication
A background check solution that automates adjudication actions can minimize time-consuming manual report review. Your chosen solution should support the complicated filtering requirements of large hospitality organizations, surfacing only relevant, reportable charges to streamline adjudication based on your unique criteria for different roles and regions.
The best background check partners will also automate the creation of adverse action documentation and immediately initiate that workflow when a candidate does not meet eligibility criteria, based on your input.
Features to look for
Potential benefits
- Reduce the number of background check reports that require manual review.
- Avoid onboarding delays by accelerating adjudication.
- Quickly engage qualified candidates before your competition does.
- Mitigate the risk of human error and bias.
Source: Hireology
Step 6
Enlist tech tools that help mitigate compliance risk
Problem: Evolving and overlapping compliance requirements
From Ban the Box and Clean Slate laws to the federal Fair Chance Reporting Act (FCRA) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines, many overlapping employment laws impact background checks. Monitoring these constantly changing regulations is challenging, especially when you hire across multiple regions. But, failing to maintain compliance can expose your organization to costly legal action and other risks.
Risks
- A large burden is placed on all HR team members to accurately monitor compliance adherence for all hiring regions.
- Possible costly fines or legal action against your organization resulting from compliance violations.
- Inconsistent adverse action workflows and decisions, creating an increased level of risk for your organization.
- Expenditure of time, money, and resources to support manual compliance reviews and processes.
Solution: Enlist tech tools to mitigate compliance risk
Choosing the right partner can help you create a consistent, compliant background check process that protects your candidates, customers, and employees, as well as your reputation. A background screening solution that features built-in compliance tools takes the heavy lifting of tracking compliance concerns off your team’s shoulders.
Features to look for
Potential benefits
- Enhance consistency across your organization, even with widely dispersed hiring and employment locations.
- Ensure reports show only records that align with relevant compliance requirements and your hiring policies.
- Reduce manual effort for TA teams.
- Minimize risk of human error and hiring bias.
- Support fair chance hiring and increase your candidate pool.
- Confidence that you’re making smart, safe hiring decisions.
For faster hospitality background checks, put Checkr on your team
Working with the right hospitality background check partner can help your organization win the race for top hospitality talent. Checkr’s modern technology helps you hire faster without sacrificing safety. Our platform streamlines your workflows via pre-built integrations with 100+ popular ATS solutions and a flexible API. On average, Checkr customers report a 40% reduction in manual work compared to their previous provider.
Ordering reports from our centralized dashboard is fast and easy. 98% of reports using our Basic+ background check package complete within one hour, so you can onboard qualified candidates quickly. With 75% of reports completed in one day, 97% of customers say Checkr’s turnaround time is faster than their previous provider.
Checkr’s intuitive, mobile-first candidate interface delivers a user-friendly candidate experience that helps prevent dropoff. Automated adjudication tools and customizable filters help lighten your TA team’s workload, support compliance, and facilitate consistent hiring decisions.
No matter where you’re hiring or how quickly you need to scale, Checkr can scale with you, providing the screening support you need to overcome today’s hospitality hiring hurdles. Get in touch now.
Hire faster with comprehensive hospitality background checks
Disclaimer
The resources and information provided here are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Always consult your own counsel for up-to-date legal advice and guidance related to your practices, needs, and compliance with applicable laws.
