Review and set Assess Lite guidelines

Background checks keep your business safe, but not all records pose the same risk. Assess helps you easily indicate which records don’t matter, minimize them, and label them as Eligible to speed up your adjudication process. You can then evaluate candidate reports faster and save time.

When you review reports, we also provide easy-to-read descriptions for what records mean to help you feel more confident in your background check decisions.

Using Assess Lite has the benefits below:

• Easily indicate which records don’t matter and minimize them from reports.
• Quickly adopt Checkr’s pre-built standards for generally less-risky records.
• Review easy-to-read descriptions for what records mean on the report.

This article explains some differences between Checkr's discontinued positive adjudication matrix (PAM) and Assess Lite.

Review Assess Lite guidelines

Assess Lite compares your guidelines to state or county criminal records in a candidate's report. Assess Lite then assigns your eligibility label to each individual record. 

Quickstart guidelines

With access to industry best practices, you can further reduce bias by knowing which records have less risk, spend less time on the evaluation process, and put more focus on your candidates.

With quickstart templates, you can select from five common adjudication guidelines to help expand your hiring and encourage fairness:

• Non-convictions
• Non-felony marijuana possession
• Non-felony drug possession & paraphernalia
• Vehicles and traffic events not resulting in death or DUI
• Less-than-misdemeanor severity

Assess Lite helps you with starter guidelines that align with best practices and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance for considering criminal records. These guidelines apply to all records.

Records that searches find in the categories you select have the Eligible status.

Quickstart templates have the sections below:

Lookback period guidelines

You can codify your report evaluation policies in Checkr by specifying how much time must pass before a record is no longer relevant within the Statutory category.

With lookback period guidelines, you can do the tasks below:

• Specify lookback period years for the Statutory category and its seven subcategories across three severities:
  • Less-than-misdemeanor
  • Misdemeanor
  • Felony
• Bulk edit by the subcategories below:
  
  • Custody & Support
  • Public Nuisance
  • Safety & Zoning
  • Fish & Game
  • Animal Ordinances
  • Gambling
  • Miscellaneous Citations

Adjust how Eligible records appear

You can set how Eligible records appear. Assess Lites minimizes these records by default, but you can expand them.

You can further speed up your adjudication process by auto-engaging candidates with Eligible records. Reports with the Eligible assessment automatically change to Engaged.

You can set how the Checkr Dashboard shows records that your guidelines assess as Eligible. The settings below that you enable apply to all assessed records for your account.

• Show Eligible records: The locations below show records assessed as Eligible:
  • Candidate Portal
  • Checkr API
  • Checkr Dashboard
  • Report PDF
• Hide Eligible records: By default, you have to select "Show more" in the Checkr Dashboard to show records with the Eligible status. Records with the Eligible status appear in the locations below:
  • Candidate Portal
  • Checkr API
  • Report PDF
• Remove Eligible records: No location below shows records assessed as Eligible:
  • Candidate Portal
  • Checkr API
  • Checkr Dashboard
  • Report PDF
• Hide Eligible records from pre-adverse action: When you begin the adverse action process, you can't select records assessed as Eligible to include in the pre-adverse action notice.
• Auto-engage candidates with Eligible records: Automatically engage candidates whose reports are assessed as Eligible.

Add new Assess Lite guidelines

Assess Lite guides you through adding Checkr-designed quickstart templates.

Select Add to automatically assess those records as Eligible.

Review previous guidelines

You can review each published version of your guidelines.

Below your guideline, select "See past versions." A window shows all published versions of the guideline with the user name and publication date.

Download and share guidelines

After you set your guidelines, you can save and publish them as usual. You can also download your guidelines in a CSV file to share with your team.