STAFFING INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
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10 minute read

5 Ways to Accelerate Time to Placement and Increase Background Check ROI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Background screenings have become an important tool to help staffing firms make informed hiring decisions. But is your organization maximizing the value of your background check platform? Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) related to the hiring process, and your background check program in particular, can help you answer this question.

Although your organization’s metrics may vary, time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, time-to-submit, and fill rate are among the most frequently used KPIs for staffing firms. Whether you operate a traditional staffing agency or a digital staffing marketplace, measuring KPIs such as offer acceptance, candidate satisfaction, or redeployment rate can also be useful.

However, if you’re relying on an outdated background screening platform without the features needed to track your KPIs, your team may struggle to assess your ROI—or make progress toward your goals. Top-performing staffing firms are 57% more likely to be in the advanced stages of digital transformation than the worst-performing firms, according to Bullhorn’s GRID 2025 Industry Trends Report.

Among the problems outdated background check solutions can cause: 

  • Cumbersome manual procedures waste time that your staffing team could be devoting to higher-value activities.
  • Bottlenecks in your background check process lead to poor completion rates and candidate dropoff, potentially costing your clients top talent and lost revenue.
  • Your background check provider’s unclear pricing and billing system makes it difficult to keep tabs on costs. Lacking clear visibility into spending, you may be wasting money and cutting into your firm’s profit margins.
  • Background checks that return inaccurate, outdated, or missing data can expose your organization and your clients to compliance violations, reputational harm, and costly litigation.

Nearly one-third (32%) of candidates have stopped working with a staffing firm because the process was taking too long.

A modern background check platform can help mitigate these risks and maximize your ROI. Staffing firms that are actively using technology to enhance recruiter productivity are nearly twice as likely than those that aren’t to be achieving top rates of revenue growth.

Follow these five steps to evaluate your background check program, and find out how Checkr’s advanced platform can enhance your background screening ROI. 

Step 1

Calculate costs and pinpoint opportunities for savings

In addition to determining the actual costs of all employment screenings and services, you should also identify opportunities for hard and soft cost savings.

Why? Although background checks may appear to be like a commoditized industry, all background screening providers are not created equal.

For example, you may discover that your team is spending an inordinate amount of time managing the background screening process. Depending on your provider, you may be manually completing tasks that could easily be automated, or eliminated altogether. 

Improving your HR team’s productivity is essential to maximizing ROI. In today’s uncertain economy, it’s likely your team will get even leaner in the future, making efficiency more essential than ever.

Conduct an assessment

To identify potential areas of savings in your organization, ask each member of the team responsible for background checks to estimate the average number of hours per week they spend on these aspects of background screenings:

    • Reviewing alerts, processing them against your adjudication matrix, and managing the adverse action process

    • Dealing with paper-based forms 

    • Researching the forms and communications required based on candidate residency

    • Waiting on hold or emailing back and forth with your background check provider for updates on outstanding screenings

    • Communicating with hiring managers, recruiters, customers, and candidates about the status of background checks

    • Responding to candidate questions about how to complete their background check

    • Requesting additional information or documentation from candidates to move their background checks forward

    • Manually gathering background check report data to conduct audits or track performance

Given your team’s salaries, how much money could you save with a more efficient background check process? Do the math, and the answer will be clear. 

Calculate your background check savings

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An advanced background screening solution, like Checkr, automates manual workflows and eliminates time-consuming tasks, saving your organization time and money. Other benefits include: 

Transparent pricing and easy-to-understand invoices
In order to monitor ROI, you need to know exactly what you’re paying for. With Checkr, it’s easy to filter invoices by cost center for more detailed insights. Checkr’s hierarchical billing lets you see costs per customer, location, and more, at a glance. Understanding which costs to allocate to which part of your organization helps you track your screening program’s performance and facilitates accurate planning and budgeting.
Ability to track performance with reporting tools
The more ways you can filter and refine data about your background screening program, the more accurately you can monitor your KPIs and gauge ROI. Checkr’s reporting and analytics capabilities enable you track critical metrics, such as average turnaround times for different background check types, as well as track screening volume by date range and by client, location, or department. Use these data-driven details to pinpoint reasons for hiring slowdowns, find new opportunities to expand your talent pool, and optimize your background screening process to increase productivity and decrease costs.
Ability to manage hiring from one dashboard
Managing hiring for multiple clients in different industries is complex—and when clients are hiring for various entities or locations, the complexity can increase exponentially. A background check solution that enables account hierarchy enables you to more easily oversee screening programs for multiple client companies and their various locations, departments, brands, or franchises. Checkr streamlines administrative processes for multiple accounts, helping you control costs. You can create separate settings for each customer, including custom background check packages, user permissions, and fee settings.

20%
faster turnaround times by switching to Checkr

9.6%
lower screening operations costs by switching to Checkr
“Using Checkr and our own internal analytics, we noticed some inefficiencies in how we were onboarding our operators. Using this data, we were able to build a different onboarding experience, putting the background check first. It enabled us to improve our conversions by 50 percent.”
Noah Labhart
Co-founder and CTO, Veryable

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Step 2

Evaluate and customize screening packages

Conducting background checks isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. Different clients, industries, locations, and positions require different background screenings. You also need to strike the right balance between overscreening, which can waste time and money, and underscreening, which can leave you vulnerable to costly compliance violations and liability issues. An increasingly complex regulatory landscape adds to the difficulty of ensuring your screenings fit the client’s needs.

Diversifying their client base to stay competitive is a top priority for 38% of staffing firms polled by Bullhorn. However, moving into new client industries means managing more complex background check requirements. If you’ve previously focused on office support or IT clients, for instance, moving into highly regulated areas such as healthcare or transportation staffing means becoming familiar with a different set of background screenings.

Conduct an assessment

Review your background check policy, then evaluate screening packages. 

    • Are your report packages designed for the position the candidate will have once hired? 

    • Do you have different packages for different position levels? 

For example, you might design your screening policy to require motor vehicle record (MVR) checks for rideshare or delivery driver candidates, but not for healthcare workers.

On average, staffing firms implementing Checkr saw a ten-day reduction in package creation times.  

Partnering with qualified background check provider, like Checkr, gives you access to:

A wide range of screens
Comprehensive background check options ensure you can perform all the screens your clients demand—today, and as your needs and your market change. Checkr provides hundreds of screening services, including national, state, county, and federal criminal records checks; civil records checks; onsite and lab-based drug screening; MVR checks; credit reports, and more.
Customizable screening packages
Reliable background check results are essential to earning your clients’ confidence and enhancing your organization’s efficiency. When a candidate flags an inaccuracy on their background check report, a dispute may be filed, which can take weeks to reconcile. More disputes mean more delays in your hiring process, a longer time-to-placement, and fewer jobs filled.
Up-to-date, high-quality data and more accurate results
Reliable background check results are essential to earning your clients’ confidence and enhancing your organization’s efficiency. When a candidate flags an inaccuracy on their background check report, a dispute may be filed, which can take weeks to reconcile. More disputes mean more delays in your hiring process, a longer time-to-placement, and fewer jobs filled. 

Many CRAs process records manually, which is time-consuming and prone to errors. Checkr’s modern and technology-led approach reliably matches records to individuals using an intelligent record-matching engine to classify, sort, and assign records to candidates. This allows us to complete screenings faster and with a high degree of accuracy—even at high volume. While other background check providers’ output can lag when volume increases, our technology can process over three million reports a month with minimal impact on turnaround time. Should a background check require human review, Checkr’s expert quality assurance team helps ensure accurate results.

81%
of Checkr’s staffing customers report improved accuracy on background checks
“Checkr has allowed our organization to expand across city and state lines to help support needs from health, drug and background screenings all across the country.”
Josh N.
Managing Partner, Small business staffing organization

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Step 3

Automate processes for greater efficiency

Reviewing each candidate’s results is one of the most time-consuming steps in the background check process. However, it’s essential for submitting and placing candidates with confidence. Finding ways to review results faster and more accurately can enhance both your efficiency and your bottom line.

Conduct an assessment

Determine how much time your team currently spends manually reviewing background check results and comparing them against your adjudication guidelines. 

    • How much time is spent contacting candidates to prompt them to start the background check process, provide the appropriate forms, guide them through the process, or answer questions?

    • How much time is spent simply flagging or clearing candidates, compared to the amount of time spent on higher-value tasks, like performing individualized assessments? 

    • How much time is spent preparing and sending pre-adverse and adverse action notices?

    • Be sure to account for the time your team spends staying current on background check laws that may impact the industries and markets you serve, your specific clients, and the different cities or states where they hire. 

If your team is spending too much time on these tasks, working with a background check partner that can automate much of the process could have a big impact. 

A modern background check platform with features that help streamline the review process can enhance your team’s efficiency and boost your screening program’s ROI. With Checkr, these features include: 

Advanced technology in the candidate experience
In today’s competitive talent market, candidates’ expectations are higher than ever. A poor candidate experience can cause dropoff, reducing offer acceptance and redeployment rates. Your client’s satisfaction and your bottom line may suffer if your background check solution falls short of what candidates expect.

Checkr’s mobile-first candidate portal is designed to keep candidates engaged and moving through the process. Candidates can quickly and easily complete their background screening application whenever it’s convenient. Robust self-help tools and resources help lessen frustration, accelerate completion, and reduce contact rates. Candidates requiring additional assistance can also get help from Checkr’s dedicated, multilingual candidate support team by chat, phone, or email.

Enhance background screening efficiencies with Checkr’s candidate-friendly workflow. Built-in error detection quickly catches mistakes, preventing them from delaying the background check. Candidates get requests for required documents immediately, helping to eliminate bottlenecks. Checkr automatically sends candidates status updates and estimated completion times that are 95% accurate to the day or sooner, keeping them in the loop and preventing dropoff.
Customizable, automated adjudication 
Manually comparing reports with results against adjudication matrices is laborious work. There’s also plenty of potential for human error, especially when you’re dealing with multiple clients (and multiple roles and locations within those client companies). Checkr’s advanced adjudication tools remove bottlenecks, helping to onboard candidates faster, without sacrificing compliance or safety. Easily set criteria for disqualifying offenses based on clients, locations, and positions. Then apply your chosen rulesets to streamline background check review, improve consistency, and reduce bias.

You can even start the FCRA-mandated adverse action process directly from the Checkr dashboard. Checkr automatically generates pre- and post-adverse action emails complete with additional attachments, like a copy of required notices or documents, and helps manage mandatory waiting periods automatically.
“The candidate experience has always been strong, smooth, and quick especially for those that have access to a smartphone. It’s a seamless experience.”
Sarah Hayden
Director of Risk Management, PrideStaff

Checkr’s automated adjudication technology redirects up to 75% of adjudication resources to other value-added work.

Streamlined disclosure and consent requirements 
Background check compliance requires adherence to federal, state, and local laws. This can be challenging for staffing firms with clients in different states and cities or clients that hire remote workers. To comply with the FCRA, you must provide proper disclosure that you intend to conduct a background check and receive the candidate’s authorization to do so. 

Checkr helps streamline this process by generating located-specific disclosure and consent forms within the platform that candidates sign electronically. When a candidate or job location is in a state with additional disclosure requirements (like California), Checkr can automatically provide these additional state-specific disclosures based on how the background check is ordered.
Automated notifications and transparency throughout the process
Your clients want to hire quickly, and they’re eager to know when a candidate’s screening will be complete. Contacting your background screening provider each time you need an update is time-consuming (and frustrating). While you wait for answers, you could lose top talent to the competition—which could cost you clients, too. 

Checkr’s automated notifications provide updates so you always have visibility into the status of background checks and can keep clients up to date, too. For example, you can get updates when report status changes or when a candidate’s invitation expires. To provide a better idea of how long a specific candidate’s background check will take, Checkr offers an estimated completion time using past history to predict accurate turnaround times.
“Checkr has allowed us to massively scale one of the trickiest parts of our business. We have been able to run tens of thousands of background checks almost completely in the background, a task that would have consumed thousands of man hours without Checkr.”
Javier R.
Director of Operations, Staffing organization

Customers improve time-to-hire with Checkr

89%
Faster turnaround times

86%
Simplified screening workflow

80%
Hire and onboard candidates faster

Find out why staffing companies choose Checkr for background checks

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Step 4

Integrate your HR systems with your provider

Busy staffing firms have plenty of work on their hands without learning to use complicated new software. A screening solution that doesn’t integrate with your existing tools and workflow not only introduces a learning curve, it may also require manual workarounds. This awkward approach wastes time and can lead to errors in the screening process. 

Conduct an assessment

If your current background check solution doesn’t integrate with your ATS, HRIS, or other HR tools, identify the biggest problems this causes for your hiring team.

    • Do you have to log in and out of two different platforms? 

    • Do you waste time entering candidates’ information twice? 

    • Can your team easily access and view all of a candidate’s information in one place, or is data siloed? 

Checkr offers the following features to streamline and simplify your background screening process:

A user-friendly, mobile-friendly solution
A platform that’s simple to learn and intuitive to use helpsyour team get up to speed quickly so you can fill open roles faster. Checkr’s mobile-optimized, intuitive interface means you and your candidates can quickly take action, wherever you happen to be. 
Pre-built integrations for 100+ leading ATS and HRIS platforms
Laborious manual work-arounds impact your team’s efficiency, increasing time-to-hire. Checkr connects to industry-leading HR platforms, like applicant tracking systems (ATS) and human resources information systems (HRIS), so there’s no need to log into multiple systems or re-enter data. Simply start background checks from within your existing workflow for a seamless hiring experience.
Support for custom integrations
For some companies, it makes sense to build background checks into your app for quick, compliant screening and hiring. If that’s your organization’s approach, Checkr’s world-class API integrates seamlessly with your in-house applications and workflows to maximize efficiency, accelerate onboarding and enhance the candidate experience. For those who prefer a more turnkey option, Embeds is the fastest way to add background check experiences to a product. The simplified integration process shortens development time so you can quickly build an end-to-end background check experience.

Whichever option you choose—partner integration with an ATS or HRIS, API, or Embeds— integrating background checks into your workflows greatly increases your team’s efficiency and improves the ROI of your screening program.

“As a result of bringing Checkr on board, our team has more time back in their days to focus on candidate retention programs, improving the onboarding experience, and the candidate onboarding process.”
Jackie McKewon
HR Generalist, Deploy HR

Step 5

Utilize your provider's customer support for the heavy lifting

Staffing firms must be able to handle a high volume of background screenings quickly. It’s common for a digital staffing marketplace to process tens of thousands of background screenings annually. Clients rely on you to scale their workforces rapidly or hire quickly for seasonal needs. Sudden surges in job orders can pose a challenge for staffing firms, especially if they can’t get the support they need from their background check provider. Poor customer service and substandard self-help solutions can slow down screenings, delay placements, and frustrate candidates and clients alike. This can cost you top talent—or even top clients—if your competitors handle background checks faster.

Conduct an assessment

Determine how much time your team spends prompting candidates to start the screening process, answering their questions about their background check, or requesting the status of a delayed report. These details can be hard to track, so you can also ask questions such as:

    • On average, how long does our screening process take from start to finish?

    • How helpful is our background check provider’s customer service?

    • Do you spend a lot of time on hold or waiting for email replies? 

    • Is customer service available during the hours you need? 

    • Are estimated completion times provided or reasons for delays explained? 

Avoid customer service problems and save time with Checkr’s top-rated platform and support, which includes:

A straightforward candidate interface with dedicated support
Checkr’s user-friendly workflows makes it easy for candidates to complete the screening process; but candidates with questions can contact us via chat, email, or phone for guidance (instead of calling you). After you’ve entered the candidate’s name and email address, Checkr handles the rest, providing a candidate-friendly workflow, automatically sending you and your candidate status updates, and providing a wealth of self-help tools and resources within the portal. Best of all, Checkr’s dedicated candidate support team provides support in English and Spanish, plus other languages for international candidates.
A user-friendly platform with help at your fingertips
A mobile-optimized solution accelerates background checks by giving HR teams and candidates easy access wherever they are. Checkr’s platform allows candidates to start and complete their background check, see results, and file disputes on any device. HR teams can use mobile or desktop to easily access turnaround time ETAs or status updates, ask candidates for information, and take other actions to move candidates through the process. Our integrated electronic consent process uses e-signatures to speed turnaround times and eliminate paper workflows.
Responsive customer support team
Expert assistance and clear communication can make all the difference when you need answers quickly. Your HR team can access Checkr’s customer support representatives by phone, online chat, or email. Our support team is FCRA trained and certified, so they can help you determine which screening packages fit your needs and budget, saving you time and money while safeguarding your organization. 

91% of customers would recommend Checkr to a colleague or other organization

“Knowing the level of support we do have is a huge reassurance. Our account manager is incredibly responsive. For Field Nation, reliable and accurate background checks and drug screenings are imperative. Knowing we can trust Checkr helps our clients trust us. That’s the key to our success.”
Nicole Berg
Director of Provider Experience & Recruitment, Field Nation

Conclusion

Get more from your background check provider

Background checks have become an essential element of the hiring process for staffing firms. However, poorly executed background checks can delay the placement process; put you at risk of litigation; and cost your organization time, money, and clients. In today’s competitive staffing environment, a background screening solution that delivers efficient, accurate, and compliant background checks can give your firm the competitive edge.

Are you ready to improve the ROI of your background check program? Partnering with an industry-leading provider, like Checkr, can help. Staffing companies trust Checkr’s background checks to help them quickly hire top talent for their clients. Our high standards for better background checks have won the trust of more than 140,000 satisfied customers, large and small. Checkr’s fast turnaround times, low dispute rates, and reputation for speed and accuracy set a high bar. Customers love our platform’s intuitive workflows, built-in compliance tools, and user-friendly candidate experience. 

75% of Checkr customers in the staffing industry have seen an improved candidate experience, simplified screening workflow, and better compliance since using Checkr.

Ready to get started with Checkr?

Talk to our experts to find out how you can improve the efficiency of your screening program and get better ROI with Checkr.

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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.