deverus

Employment Verification

Research + User Experience

deverus is a background check platform; through Credit Reporting Agencies, thousands of companies use this technology daily to perform background checks and make hiring decisions.

When it comes to background checks, the more manual the process, the longer it takes. So the more things can be automated, the better. One procedure in particular that deverus looked to automate was the process of verifying past employment.

Research

Even today, the primary way past employment is verified is via phone. A researcher at a CRA (Credit Reporting Agency) will call a company listed on a job application to verify an applicant’s work experience. It’s not the quickest of processes, but “that’s the way it’s always been done.” As a result, it can take days or even weeks to verify past work experience. In the meantime, both the company and candidate are waiting to be able to finish the hiring process and get to work. The goal of this project was to automate the employment verification process by using email as the first means of contact.

User Journey

After speaking with several CRAs to learn about their employment verification processes, I mapped out a user journey for the current process. As I worked, a process which had seemed relatively simple at the outset became almost comically complex. There were so many things that could go wrong: misinformation, requirements for written requests, and people not answering calls being but a few.

In the end, we were able to create a relatively simple augmentation to the current workflow, where an automated email would be sent to the appropriate contact, with a link to fill out a brief questionnaire to verify a candidate’s employment. If that failed after a certain number of attempts or time period, the CRA would revert to the old standby of picking up the phone.

(Very) Low Fidelity Prototype

Solution

In addition to the journey map I created, I also made a low fidelity prototype for the process. I started with a hand drawn prototype because sometimes even grayscale wireframes can feel too polished. I wanted to make something quickly, and I wanted to keep the focus on how the process would work.

Results

This feature was launched shortly before my tenure at deverus ended. While I don’t have any data to prove whether or not it was successful, I can say there were no complaints from clients that I’m aware of. Most of the time, no news is good news.

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