How to streamline conditional offers of employment

A conditional offer of employment is a provisional job offer that is subject to specific conditions being met, such as all background checks being completed successfully. It's a helpful tool for employers to get their new hires working as soon as possible whilst still ensuring the candidate fully qualifies for the role. For hiring managers however it can be quite time-consuming to manually manage and stay on top of conditional job offers, especially at companies with complex or high-volume hiring needs.

The specific criteria of a conditional offer of employment can differ between companies and are often based on industry regulations. For example, UK employers hiring individuals in the security industry require candidates to complete a full range of checks called BS7858. However, in order to fast-track employment, a conditional job offer can be made upon completion of a smaller set of preliminary checks, known as ‘Limited Screening’. A typical BS7858 security screening process takes 1 – 3 months to complete in full and so Limited Screening is used to get the new starter working more quickly.

One of the challenges associated with conditional employment is triggering the job offer as soon as possible after the candidate has met the specific conditions required. Typically, it is incumbent on the hiring manager to regularly check the status of their candidates’ background checks and manually approve and send conditional offers. When speeding up time-to-work is the objective, this approach is not optimum. Thankfully VettingGateway has solved this problem with the launch of the Milestones feature – available for Enterprise users.

The Milestones feature in VettingGateway takes automation a step further by allowing employers to trigger actions at key stages in the background checking process. This is often used for conditional offers of employment but can also fill a range of use cases such as enforcing a manual review after specific documents have been uploaded etc. The feature is fully configurable according to any set of checks you require. When a milestone is reached a task is automatically generated, allowing users to follow up as required.

For companies with high volume hiring needs, managing the background checking process can be especially complex when conditional job offers or manual reviews are required. By automating this process, VettingGateway helps employers speed up time-to-hire significantly with less manual intervention required. If you recruit for multiple roles with differing background checking requirements, the Milestones feature in VettingGateway will cut through the complexity, eliminate human error and optimise time-to-hire.