Our joint aim was to drastically reduce the turnaround time of activity verification. To do so, Reed Screening invited their candidates to use Konfir. Using an integration, candidates were invited to grant access to their employment records via Open Banking and Payroll Providers.
The high-level results were a resounding success: 43% of requests completed within three hours and 70% were done within a day. Turnaround times aside, what did our launch tell us? Improving speed is critical but there are also a number of other challenges in the employment screening world. Reed Screening refer to these as the 5 “Vs”:
Volume is the proportion of activity verifications that are successfully completed. Doing so by obtaining references from a primary source (a previous employer) is the traditional method, but not the most efficient. Out of 101,000 employment references that Reed Screening verified only 61% were obtained from the employer themselves. By verifying through Open Banking and Payroll Providers through Konfir, this number increased to 80%, with 4 in every 5 candidates completing their verification. For the 20% that didn’t complete, there were actionable improvements such as clearer messaging about Konfir, and better scheduling of outbound contact to candidates. This highlights the scalability of the Instant product over the traditional one.
Validity is the percentage of references which are acceptable. On average 90% of references obtained by Reed Screening were valid, with the exceptions being due to cases where the referee was incorrect, information was missing, or the candidates themselves were deemed as being unsuitable. There is no direct comparison here, as Konfir doesn’t subjectively gauge candidate suitability, but we have successfully removed the variable around referees; by drawing from the source of truth (Banking and Payroll data), we can be confident that the data is valid. Work at Konfir is continuing to identify and surface the required information to screening agents in the best way possible.
Veracity measures if the information provided by the candidate and the referee matches up, whereas Verification is the percentage of referees who could be deemed legitimate. From a review of 101,000 references, these values were 69% and 65%, respectively. By going to an instant source of truth, all information comes from a validated, regulated source of reference.
Finally, Value measures the information contained within each verification. 81% of references received by Reed Screening prior to their lauch with Konfir included confirmation of dates of employment only. In this instance, we actually argue that less is more, since employers have increasingly shifted to providing ‘standard’ only references, and for good reason.
Historically, employment referencing hadn’t done much to evolve beyond phone and email. Reed Screening and Konfir have been delighted to take the first step together in changing this. Stay tuned as we deliver more joint innovation and insight in this space.