Staffing Solutions
Why You Shouldn’t Skip Pre-Employment Screening of Unskilled Workers
Prescreening may be one of the first things hiring managers do while recruiting skilled workers for open positions. Verifying employment history, credentials, and certifications is an important part of the process. When it comes to hiring unskilled workers, especially if they’re just going to work temporarily, this recruiting step is just as important. In this article, we’ll explore the types of prescreening tools that can help find quality unskilled workers and three reasons why you shouldn’t skip pre-employment prescreening.
The Different Types of Pre-Employment Screening
Employers run many different prescreening records and checks on skilled candidates for permanent positions. However, they can also be useful for prescreening unskilled ones as well such as:
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Social Security Verifications: This check ensures the worker’s government identification is accurate.
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Criminal Background Checks: getting a record of a candidate's criminal history can help employers assess if a candidate would be safe to have on a job site.
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Credit Report Check: This type of prescreening can help employers gauge the reliability of a job candidate, especially if the job requires being around business finances.
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Driving Records: If driving is part of the job assignment, these records can help determine if the candidate is a safe and responsible driver.
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Drug Tests: To verify if a candidate uses illegal substances.
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Worker's Compensation: This type of search will reveal if a worker was involved in any work accidents during their previous work assignments.
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Employment Verification: Ensures that the work history a candidate provides is accurate.
Now that you’re familiar with the different types of prescreening options available for recruiting unskilled workers, we’ll cover why prescreening them is so important.
Ensure a Safe Workplace While
Whether a worker is on the job for three days or three months, prescreening ensures they maintain a safe working environment. Your regular staff would appreciate working with temps that will contribute to the company culture, especially if they’re already swamped with work. Prescreening such as criminal checks, driving records, drug testing, social security verifications, and credit checks can reveal potential risks that an unskilled worker might pose if brought on to work temporarily on your work site. Skilled or not, you need reliable, trustworthy workers who won’t bring any legal troubles your way.
Save Time and Money
The workers you’re hiring may not need certifications or years of previous experience, but you want to feel confident that they will do a good job while on your worksite. Prescreening can help save you time and money on recruiting by identifying who would be a good fit for the position before bringing them on. It also cuts down on the time of sifting through applications and resumes, allowing you to recruit temp workers even faster. Prescreening tools like pre-employment questionnaires can help assess a candidate’s soft skills, such as great communication, teamwork, and attention to detail.
Improve Workplace Productivity
When one worker doesn’t perform their duties well or not at the level that’s expected of them, it can have negative effects on business productivity. It can slow down production, have your permanent staff do extra work, or even worse, lose customers due to poor service. Prescreening unskilled workers by checking references or conducting quick, informal interviews can give you a better sense of a candidate's capabilities to handle a job assignment before hiring them.
Prescreening unskilled workers who won’t be working for you in the long term may seem excessive. However, it’s necessary to make sure that anyone you hire is a valuable asset to your team and will not bring any legal troubles your way. At Labor Finders, we take the work and the cost of prescreening off our client’s hands so they can concentrate on what they do best – run their business. From social security verifications to skills assessments, we vet every worker who enters our branches before sending them out on job assignments. That helped us win Best of Staffing for fifteen consecutive years, a testament to our dedication to providing a quality workforce.
