COMPLIANCE: Does Your Employment Screening Vendor Have Your Back?

As HR Professionals we get comfortable with our employment screening vendors, trusting they are taking care of us.  That’s what we pay them for, right?  We know they will have our back, feed us the important information we need, keep us compliant and safe in our screening practices.  But, do we really know if they are doing that?   They will eventually return our call, we are important to them…… right?  

The time is now to task your employment screening vendor.  Make it a point to hold them accountable.  If they truly are your “perfect screening partner” as they claim to be, they will take an effort to prove it again, and again, and again.

If your Vendor has considered you the safe client, they have a tendency to get lazy.  They tend not to follow up as quickly and they focus on the newer client that has higher billables or that may have a better brand than you to make them look good to other prospective clients.

Do they answer the phone when you call? Or do you leave a message with a service in a foreign country hoping for a return call in the next day or two, or three?  Here is the Big One……If you ask to speak with the CEO right now, will that CEO take your call today?  Or will you be re-routed to a manager instead?

We are in a very regulatory compliant environment.  You have to depend on your employment screening vendor to keep you safe, updated and always moving in the most efficient direction.

If you do not know the true relationship you have with them, its time to change your employment screening vendor.  In this environment you must have a trusted partner, not just a Vendor.   You will get better service, better pricing and a better relationship with that new Partner.   Trust your instincts.  An indifferent vendor will eventually land you in court and they will not be there to have your back.

  A veteran employment screening and risk management professional,  Brian D. Chapman is the CEO at MBI Worldwide, a global employment screening company.  Chapman received a degree in Criminal Justice from John. A. Logan College and has been appointed into the CEO Council of Tampa Bay as well as a member of the NAPBS National Board of Credentialing.  He is an author and expert witness in the employment background check circuit.  Chapman is a frequent keynote speaker on issues of EEOC compliance, adverse action and employment screening best practices.