Checkr mission
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Candidate stories: Better understand the past and present
Read MoreA candidate story is candidate-submitted context about their arrest or conviction records and self-improvement efforts. After a candidate submits their story, you can read it in their report in the Checkr Dashboard.
Candidate stories help you comply with fair chance hiring practices and Ban the Box regulations. Some jurisdictions require you to collect relevant supplementary information from candidates during the adverse action process.
To disable candidate stories, contact Checkr.
Note
You can use the Checkr API to create and retrieve candidate stories.
Request a candidate story in the Checkr Dashboard
To request a candidate story, use the steps below:
- In the Checkr Dashboard, open the candidate's report.
- In the Actions section, select "Request candidate story."
Candidates can also submit stories without you requesting them.
The Tag field on the Candidates page shows who you asked for additional information and who submitted it. Checkr uses the tags below:
- candidate-story-requested
- candidate-story-submitted
Notifications
To set notifications for candidate story submissions, use the Account page. By default, your adjudicators receive notifications for candidate stories submitted before the pre-adverse action process begins.
To manage candidate stories you receive, you can make an account for your adjudicators to share:
- Create a new user with an adjudicator role.
- Set the new user’s email address as the address for the group.
- Set the new user to receive notifications of candidate story submissions.
After submission, the story and supporting documents appear in the Additional Information section in their report. After you read the candidate's story, you can mark it as read.
Candidate experience
Candidates receive an email invitation to log in to the Candidate Portal and voluntarily submit additional context or supporting documents.
In the Candidate Portal, the candidate selects "Share your story." The candidate then provides general information or context for a specific record and submits documents.
The Candidate Portal clearly states to candidates that you, decide whether to review submissions and Checkr doesn't guarantee that you will.
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Fair chance: Hiring candidates with records
Read MoreAt Checkr, we believe people with records should be able to leave their pasts behind.
Fair chance hiring is the practice of hiring people with arrest or conviction records. Fair chance hiring offers everyone an equal chance at suitable jobs, regardless of background. Fair chance hiring helps you find skilled, varied workers with different experiences, who boost diversity and business success.
Fair chance dashboard
The fair chance dashboard appears only if you use Checkr for employment purposes, not for business, insurance, or housing purposes.
You can access your organization’s fair chance dashboard from the "Fair chance" page of your Checkr Dashboard. This page has education, hiring-related analytics for organizations that have data, and other resources.
The data in this dashboard appears for admin users and other roles that have explicit permission to access analytics in the Checkr Dashboard.
Analytics
The analytics below don't appear for all customers. The data your organization has determines which analytics appear.
Adverse action rate bar chart
The three-bar chart compares your rate of adverse actions to organizations that order a comparable number of background checks each year.
Your adverse action rate is the total candidates your organization initiated adverse action for, divided by the total reports that have the Consider outcome.
"Average" is the adverse action rate of the 50th percentile for your group of similar-size organizations.
"High fair chance" is the adverse action rate of the top 10% of similar-size organizations with the lowest adverse action rates.
Fair chance opportunity metric breakdown
This section shows the total candidates who received adverse action in the past year and shows candidates in four charge categories:
- Pending charges: No official guilty or not-guilty decision exists, and the case is ongoing.
- Petty charges: Petty charges are the least severel, might not be serious in nature, and might not be relevant to your business or job type.
- Charges over seven years old: People are less likely to commit additional offenses over time. People with charges older than seven years have surpassed the statistical reoffense rate.
- Charges from when the candidates were younger than 25 years old: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) encourages considering the person's age at the time of offense when determining eligibility for candidates with records. Research about brain maturation suggests that adolescent brains continue to mature well into the 20s. Additionally, according to many world organizations, such as the United Nations, "youth" refers to people younger than 25 years old. You can consider candidates who were younger than 25 at the time of the offense as “youth.”
For more information about fair chance hiring practices, refer to Checkr's Fair Chance Mission.
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Expungements: Helping candidates move on from their past
Read MoreAt Checkr, we believe a criminal sentence shouldn't be a life sentence to unemployment. We believe that the past shouldn't limit human potential, and we work to expand people’s opportunities.
To promote our mission of fair chance hiring, we built an affordable expungement process for candidates with certain eligible charges in California.
What are expungements?
Expungements seal, or remove criminal charges from, a public record. The factors below affect the availability of expungements:
- Jurisdiction of the initial charge
- Charges from multiple jurisdictions
- Charge type and severity
- How long ago the charge happened
- Rehabilitation procedures and opportunities
- Fines and fees for the charges and potential expungements
Some states have mandatory expungement policies for certain charges. Many candidates and employers don't know about these policies and don’t know which charges qualify.
Checkr supports expungement services in the ways below:
- Identify potentially expungeable records for certain charges in California.
- Help candidates through the expungement petition process.
Expungements in California
Checkr identifies records
Checkr helps both customers and candidates identify which records might qualify for expungement:
- For customers: The Checkr Dashboard identifies potentially expungeable records.
- For candidates: For potentially expungeable records for certain charges in California, Checkr takes the actions below:
- Checkr contacts candidates directly by email and text message.
- The Candidate Portal identifies the record.
After Checkr identifies candidates with charges in California that are eligible for expungement, Checkr refers them to Avenues Legal LLP. Avenues Legal LLP is a law firm in California that evaluates candidate eligibility and processes expungement petitions. All service costs go to Avenues Legal LLP.
The expungement process has the steps below:
- Checkr notifies the candidate that they have a potentially expungeable record.
- If the candidate wants an expungement, they complete a questionnaire in the Checkr Candidate Portal to determine whether the record qualifies.
- If the record qualifies, Checkr passes the information below to Avenues Legal LLP:
- The candidate’s contact information
- The candidate's eligible charge information
- The underlying background check report
- The candidate chooses whether to pay the legal and processing fees for filing their petition.
- Avenues Legal LLP creates and files the candidate’s petition and communicates results.
- Checkr emails the candidate with the expungement decision.
California data access expungement legislation
In July 2023, California enacted California Senate Bill 731 (CA SB 731). California is the first state to allow most old convictions on a person’s criminal record to be permanently expunged. The law also expands the list of convictions eligible for expungement.
Checkr’s policy team tracks expungement legislation to ensure that implementation doesn't limit court access to records for background checks.
Get involved
Checkr wants to partner with nonprofits, government entities, and companies to sponsor expungements so more candidates benefit from a clear record. To learn more, contact expungements@checkr.com.
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Assess Lite
Read MoreThis article explains some differences between Checkr's discontinued positive adjudication matrix (PAM) and Assess Lite.
Note
All customers will have Assess Lite by 2024.
Labels
The magenta Consider label is now an orange Review label.
A new Eligible label applies for reports with records that don’t disqualify a candidate. Assess Lite hides Eligible records by default. You can expand Eligible records as needed.
Candidate list
The Status column shows the stage of the invitation, such as sent, pending, or complete. The report result determines which label the Assessment column shows:
- Clear
- Eligible
- Review
Report
After you enable Assess Lite, a broad definition appears with each charge. When Assess Lite labels a record Eligible, it explains why.
Guidelines
Quickstart templates
With quickstart templates, you can select from five common adjudication guidelines to help expand your hiring funnel 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
Lookback period guidelines
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
Review guidelines & download
After you set your guidelines, you can save and publish them as usual. You can download your guidelines in a CSV file in the Review section.
Adjust how Eligible records appear
You can set whether and how Eligible records appear. Assess Lite hides these records by default.
Assess Lite is free.
With Assess Lite, you can configure guidelines for the Statutory category. If you previously used the Statutory subcategories with your PAM rules, those rules will be automatically migrated to Assess Lite on 9/19/23. So there is no need for you to rebuild them from scratch.
Categories other than Statutory are unavailable in Assess Lite, and you can't recreate them. Contact Checkr to explore upgrading to Assess Standard, which has access to 55 categories.
Assess Lite has lookback periods for only the Statutory category. If you need to filter by more categories, consider upgrading to Assess Standard.
The export is primarily for your record keeping. You don't need the export to create settings in Assess Lite. If you upgrade to Assess Standard, you might want to refer to your PAM settings to make your new guidelines.
Choose from five of our most adopted quickstart guidelines that focus on fairer evaluations. If a record is not relevant, you can label it as Eligible and minimize it from view by selecting "Hide from report."
- 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
- Custody & support
- Public nuisance
- Safety & zoning
- Fish & game
- Animal ordinances
- Gambling
- Miscellaneous citations
Review and set 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.
Review Assess Lite guidelines
Quickstart guidelines
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:
- Non-convictions
- The record has not resulted in a conviction, possibly for a reason below:
- A jury found the defendant "not guilty."
- The court dismissed the case because of lack of evidence.
- In certain locations, the court ordered deferred or alternative adjudication.
- Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), non-convictions are reportable for up to seven years. Many states further restrict reporting by consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) and use by employers.
- The record has not resulted in a conviction, possibly for a reason below:
- Less-than-misdemeanor severity
- These lowest-level records, such as infractions, typically result in fines.
- These records can result in convictions and non-convictions. These records can appear for up to seven years where reportable.
- Non-felony marijuana possession
- As more states legalize marijuana use, several states and cities have started lowering employment barriers for people with low-level marijuana convictions.
- Marijuana possession can result in either a conviction or non-conviction. Under the FCRA, non-convictions are reportable for up to seven years from the record filing date. Convictions are reportable indefinitely.
- Non-felony drug possession and paraphernalia
- This category combines severity and the drug categories below. If the severity is lower than a felony, these categories will be labeled as Eligible.
- Possession
- Intent to possess
- Possession of paraphernalia
- Possession without prescription
- These records can result in convictions or non-convictions. Under the FCRA, non-convictions are reportable for up to seven years from the record filing date. Convictions are reportable indefinitely. State, city, and county laws might further restrict reportability.
- This category combines severity and the drug categories below. If the severity is lower than a felony, these categories will be labeled as Eligible.
- Vehicles and traffic events not resulting in death or DUI
Set your Assess Lite guidelines
Determine how to show Eligible records
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.
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Show Eligible records with an icon: The locations below show records assessed as Eligible:
- Candidate Portal
- Checkr API
- Checkr Dashboard
- Report PDF
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Hide Eligible records in the Dashboard: 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
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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 the settings for each published version of your guidelines.
In a guideline, open the menu and select View Versions. A window shows all published versions of the guideline with the user name and publication date.
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Features of Assess Premium
Read MoreCheckr offers Assess Premium to help streamline your team’s adjudication process by manually defining rules for evaluating records that searches find.
First, you set powerful and flexible adjudication rules. Based on your rules, Assess Premium assigns a status to records in the completed reports. You can then focus on reviewing reports that need your attention.
Customized, role-based adjudication rules
Customize adjudication rules for any role based on the information below:
- Age of the record
- Candidate's age at the time of offense
- Disposition
- Frequency of record type
- Record severity
- Record type
More efficient adjudication
Assess Premium can help reduce the number of reports that need manual review by up to 90%.
Filtering records based on the rules your adjudicator sets can reduce your time manually reviewing reports by up to 80%.
Risk mitigation
Assess Premium helps you standardize eligibility decisions for your candidate pool. By setting your rules to show only the records you care about, you can reduce the risk of human error and bias. Targeted and consistent review processes help you with the tasks below:
- Help demonstrate your compliance.
- Make informed decisions about your policies based on real data.
Assess Premium doesn't replace your compliance program, particularly your background check review and adjudication practices. Assess Premium applies your defined rules to records to help your review and adjudication practices.
As a consumer reporting agency, Checkr doesn't adjudicate records for you. You should consult your legal counsel about which Assess Premium settings best fit your needs, including the topics below:
- How to apply your company’s review and adjudication practices to Assess Premium
- How your use of Assess Premium might affect your responsibilities under applicable federal and state laws
Possible report statuses for Assess Premium
When a report completes, Assess Premium compares records to your eligibility rules and assigns 1 of 3 possible statuses. The assigned status appears in the Assessment column on the Candidates page of the dashboard:
- Eligible: A situation below applies:
- The report has no criminal history or other records.
- The report has records that, according to your Assess Premium rules, don't require adjudicator consideration.
- Review: Your rules flagged at least one record in this report.
- Escalated: Your rules flagged at least one record in this report for detailed review.
Checkr Dashboard
Completed reports that use Assess Premium have the Complete status. Only admins and adjudicators can access record-level assessments in the dashboard.
Checkr API
A report has an overall status of Clear, Eligible, Review, or Escalated based on the searches it includes. Reports with no records have a status of Clear.
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Features of Assess Standard
Read MoreCheckr offers Assess Standard as a more affordable version of Assess. Assess Standard helps streamline your team’s adjudication process.
First, you set powerful and flexible adjudication guidelines. Based on your rules, Assess Standard assigns a status to records in the completed reports. Reports that meet your criteria are assessed as Clear, and you can automatically engage those candidates. You can then focus on reviewing reports that need your attention.
Customized, role-based adjudication guidelines
Customize adjudication guidelines for any role based on the information below:
- Age of the record
- Candidate's age at the time of offense
- Disposition
- Record severity
- Record type
More efficient adjudication
Assess Standard can help reduce the number of reports that need manual review by up to 70%.
Filtering records based on the guidelines your adjudicator sets can reduce your time manually reviewing reports by up to 70%.
Risk mitigation
Assess Standard helps you standardize eligibility decisions for your candidate pool. By setting your rules to show only the records you care about, you can reduce the risk of human error and bias. Targeted and consistent review processes help you with the tasks below:
- Help demonstrate your compliance.
- Make informed decisions about your policies based on real data.
Assess Standard doesn't replace your compliance program, particularly your background check review and adjudication practices. Assess Standard applies your defined guidelines to records to help your review and adjudication practices.
As a consumer reporting agency, Checkr doesn't adjudicate records for you. You should consult your legal counsel about which Assess Standard settings best fit your needs, including the topics below:
- How to apply your company’s review and adjudication practices to Assess Standard
- How your use of Assess Standard might affect your responsibilities under applicable federal and state laws
Possible report statuses for Assess Standard
When a report completes, Assess Standard compares records to your eligibility guidelines and assigns a status. The assigned status appears in the Assessment column on the Candidates page of the dashboard:
- Clear: The report returned no results.
- Eligible: The report returned no records that would make the candidate ineligible.
- Review: At least one record in this report needs evaluation based on your guidelines.
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Assess Standard welcome guide for PAM users
Read MoreThis article explains some differences between Checkr's discontinued positive adjudication matrix (PAM) and Assess Standard.
Labels
The magenta Consider label is now an orange Review label.
A new Eligible label applies for reports with records that don’t disqualify a candidate. Assess Standard hides Eligible records by default. You can expand Eligible records as needed.
Candidate list
The Status column shows the stage of the invitation, such as sent, pending, or complete. The report result determines which label the Assessment column shows:
- Clear
- Eligible
- Review
Report
Select a record to read a broad definition of it. When Assess Standard labels a record Eligible, it explains why.
Guidelines
Quickstart templates
With quickstart templates, you can select from 13 common adjudication guidelines to help expand your hiring funnel and encourage fairness.
Lookback period guidelines
With lookback period guidelines, you can do the tasks below:
- Set your criteria for less-than-misdemeanor records.
- Identify records in each subcategory.
- Bulk edit by category or bulk upload using a CSV.
- Specify lookback period years for up to 55 subcategories.
Review guidelines & download
After you set your guidelines, you can save and publish them as usual. You can now download a guideline PDF in the Review section.
Adjust how Eligible records appear
You can set whether and how Eligible records appear. Assess Standard hides these records by default.
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Checkr Adjudication Product Migration from PAM to Assess FAQs
Read MoreEffective 6/27/23, the Positive Adjudication Matrix (PAM) will be discontinued and replaced with a new and improved adjudication product called Assess Standard. Current PAM customers will be migrated automatically to a free trial of Assess Standard.
Assess Standard brings an easier-to-use interface, more granular control, and the addition of 13 templated guidelines to maximize candidate throughput. Assess Standard also reduces reports requiring review up to 70%, getting your team the results they need even quicker.
The Checkr team will be migrating all current customer PAM settings directly to Assess Standard so existing adjudication processes will not be impacted. There is no action required by Checkr customers.
Read below for answers to common questions about the migration.
Why is this migration from the Positive Adjudication Matrix (PAM) happening?
The new adjudication solution, Assess Standard, addresses feature gaps in the PAM product and provides a superior self-service user experience.
Is this migration going to mess up our existing adjudication settings?
No, not at all! Our team will be careful porting over all existing settings for a seamless transition. As the migration date gets closer, we will also provide educational resources to make sure you feel equipped with the new product.
I have a question about the migration; who should I contact?
Reach out to your assigned Customer Success Manager (CSM). The initial email you received announcing the migration came from your CSM, so simply reply to that email with any questions. If you don’t have an assigned CSM, contact Checkr Customer Support.
What happens when my free trial of Assess Standard expires?
You will receive a head’s up 30+ days before your trial ends with details about the cost of Assess Standard and your options to continue or opt out of the product.
What’s better about Assess Standard?
It’s the future of your adjudication at Checkr and built off the Assess Premium framework, which has been our gold standard adjudication optimization offering since 2020.
Customers with Assess Standard are seeing 20% fewer reports requiring review compared to PAM, meaning you’re spending less time looking at reports and more time getting candidates through the funnel. Overall Standard users see a 70% reduction in reports requiring review over no adjudication solution.
Assess Standard also brings 13 templated guidelines with turn-key, fairness/compliance settings. These guidelines will not only help you expand your top-of-funnel but also increase fairness through your policies. We recommend you discuss with your legal counsel what fits your compliance needs. With Asses Standard, your team will be able to hone in on their adjudication settings significantly more effectively than PAM.
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FAQs for Clean Slate initiatives in the US
Read MoreApproaches to mitigate Clean Slate-related data limitations
Checkr’s goal is to immediately mitigate all instances of data restrictions related to clean slate initiatives. Because clean slate initiatives differ across jurisdictions, it's difficult to estimate when records will become available.
Checkr has created tools to mitigate data limitations that states and counties might experience as they implement Clean Slate laws. If the implementation of clean slate initiatives is causing inaccessible jurisdictions, contact Checkr to enable your account to skip the search. You can select "Complete now" to cancel pending searches and complete the report without them. You can also decide whether to order follow-up reports when inaccessible jurisdictions are available again:
- Automatic full follow-up reports: When previously unavailable jurisdictions have available records, the full report with all searches automatically happens again. Typical pricing applies.
- Automatic partial follow-up reports: When previously unavailable jurisdictions have available records, only searches in those jurisdictions automatically happen again. Discounted pricing applies.
- Manual full or partial follow-up reports: If you don't want follow-up reports to happen automatically, you can manually select individual reports for full or partial follow-up reports.
Discounting doesn't apply to the original report or full follow-up reports. We offer a 40% discount to Checkr costs only for partial follow-up reports. The discount doesn't apply to county passthrough fees. Because the follow-up reports are on a different package, the invoice PDF will show a different line and title. For example, the original report shows "Run it all" with a price of $20. The follow-up report shows "Run it all (Ta 2)" with a price of $12.
Full follow-up reports are subject to standard package pricing. Partial follow-up reports are available at a 40% discount to Checkr costs. This discount doesn’t apply to county passthrough fees.
Checkr’s goal is to immediately mitigate all instances of data restrictions related to clean slate initiatives. Because clean slate initiatives differ across jurisdictions, it's difficult to estimate when records will become available.
Clean Slate + government policy
There are two main types of expungement bills:- Petition-based bills, which don't restrict data access
- Large-scale automated expungement bills, also known as Clean Slate bills, restrict data access
Expungement bills pass through various parties before implementation. The standard government process typically involves the steps below:
- State-level expungement bills originate from citizen-based advocacy groups, public interest groups, or other organizations that focus on criminal justice reform.
- A legislator introduces the bill and moves it through a complex legislative process.
- The bill becomes a law when the state Governor signs it.
- The Department of Justice and the state judicial system implement the bill.
Bill proposal timelines vary; however, we follow trend lines throughout the country to proactively engage in expungement legislation. Checkr is aware and engaged where Clean Slate bills are passed, proposed, and implemented in all states.
If a state has a high probability of moving forward with Clean Slate legislation, Checkr educates our support team to ensure a successful implementation while remaining aware of potential areas of significant risk.
Although expungement legislation is well-intentioned, it often lacks the appropriate items below:
- Guidance from the state to the courts
- Budget to facilitate the automated requirements of the law
- Timeline for implementation after the bill becomes law
Checkr works to help mitigate these risks before bill passage.
Michigan implementation of Clean Slate
For county-level data updates, check data.checkrstatus.com.
Inaccessible Counties
All jurisdictions are accessible.