What happens when your candidate fails a background test? Or worse, what if you are the subject of an unfavourable screening test?
Here you’ll find everything you need to know about failed background checks, and what steps to take next.
It’s the recruiter’s worst nightmare—after weeks of interviews and negotiation, your perfect candidate comes back with a failed background check after a job offer has been made. Is it back to the drawing board, or is a failed screening test actually not the end of the world?
Here, we’ll explore the dark side of screening checks, that candidates can and do fail background checks due to a range of factors, and how both employers and jobseekers should react to the bad news. We’ll cover:
01 - The Alarming Rise of Failed Background Checks in the UK
Screening tests should be used to determine initial suitability for a role (which can be undertaken using a quick search screening like YOONO), as well as verifying that the person has nothing more serious in their history that an employer should be aware of.
However, it’s a fact of life that not everyone has a squeaky clean record, and its entirely possible that a candidate, or yourself as a jobseeker, will fail a background check. What’s perhaps more alarming, however, is the steady rise in candidates failing background checks after job offers in the UK.
A staggering 85% of UK employers experience candidates failing background checks, according to a 2024 report by Zinc. The same report also revealed a marked increase in healthcare sector candidates failing screening checks, with one-in-five being found to fail checks of one or more factors, including criminal history, references, address, and right-to-work certification.
With social media use on the rise, more employers are also checking candidates’ social post history to ensure that potential employees will match the values of the employing organisation, bringing a new layer of possibility for failing into the mix.
02 - What Are the Reasons Someone Might Fail a Background Check?
There are many reasons why a candidate might have a failed background check after a job offer has been made, or even at an earlier stage of the process.
Some reasons for a screening check failure might be less serious than others, and your course of action will hinge on the nature and severity of the failure. For example, someone might fail a background check if they are unable to provide an address that has remained the same over the last 6 months or a year, but this may not be much to worry about if the person has simply moved home recently. These types of administrative discrepancies can be investigated further by the employer, and it may be no cause for alarm.
Moving up the chain of severity, the mid-range includes more worrying reasons for failure such as inaccurate application materials, inconsistencies in someone’s employment record, and missing references.
More serious reasons for failing a background check may include a criminal record, a poor driving history, failed drugs or alcohol tests or negative reviews from former employers.
03 - What Steps Should I Take if My Candidate Fails a Background Check?
So your candidate’s test result has come back as failed or not in ideal shape. You may have been invested in this person as a strong candidate for the role, so it can be frustrating to receive a negative result. However, you can take different courses of action depending on the results of a screening check, and also on the type of background check you have requested.
Scenario 01: The candidate has an unfavourable social media screening test result
Social media screening is becoming far more commonplace, and is a useful way for employers to see if candidates would be a good cultural fit for their business, and they also give a sense of whether someone’s behaviour would align with the company’s values. A weekday party animal might not be the best match for a diligent 9-to-5 employee, for example. You can also see if what somebody shares online indicates that they would bring additional value into the business, such as participating in volunteering, community work or are cultivating side hustle skills.
If someone is revealed to have shared, created or commented on controversial content as part of a screening test, it’s definitely a good idea to have a plan of action, which begins with how you conduct the test in the first place:
Firstly, it’s important to use a social media screening service that is reliable and scans as much content as possible, in order to avoid a biased test result. An AI-powered screening tool like YOONO searches the highest possible quantity of data available on third-party websites and social media platforms, giving you as much information as possible before you make a decision.
Social media screening is legal in the UK, but there is an ongoing debate surrounding its uses, and whether it is appropriate to conduct a check without the person’s consent. If the screening check scans already publicly available data, such as public social media accounts, you don’t need the consent of the individual, but researching someone’s private accounts would be a violation of data privacy, and should be avoided in any situation.
Once a person’s social media screening test brings back results, it may highlight different types of content for your attention. It’s important to distinguish between content that would impact negatively on the person’s ability to perform the job role (think unethical or illegal content), and content that is simply undesirable (think party photos or provocative images). The first type of content should be taken very seriously, and is likely to eliminate the candidate from your consideration process, but the second type requires a more measured outlook. It’s best to review this type of result with other members of your team and consult HR staff where appropriate, to assess whether this type of social content could present a reputational risk for the business down the line.
While most social media screening tests are designed to help you assess if someone is simply the right fit, in more extreme cases they can also highlight issues that might impact on a business’ reputation down the line. Bringing individuals into a company who may have a history of sharing worrying, or even illegal, content online is a shortcut to future reputational damage, so it pays to be diligent at an early stage in the hiring process.
Scenario 02: The candidate has failed a formal background check
While some screening checks can be conducted at the outset of the recruitment cycle, most recruiters and employers will do a final formal background check on a candidate after offering a job and before formalising an employment contract.
These types of background check offer a final seal of reassurance that the candidate has met all the requirements of the role and company at large, and may include research on a person’s criminal record, driving history, employment history, credit background and other information relating to their address and right-to-work certification. Some companies and sectors will also require a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check before a person begins employment.
Of course, it’s possible that an individual may fail a background check, in one area or across multiple aspects. In these cases, it’s advisable to follow the procedure or similar below:
Begin by objectively assessing each part of the check that has come back with a failed result. Evaluate the nature and impact of the failure, and consult with other colleagues and leadership in order to assess whether the failure would have a detrimental impact on the business. For example, a candidate may have not disclosed a past criminal conviction, and while this is not ideal, in some cases it may be assessed that this does not pose a reputational risk or a risk to the safety of existing staff.
Contact the candidate requesting clarification or further information, along with a timescale of how long it will take to process this additional information.
Assess whether the additional information provided by the candidate is sufficient to ‘offset’ the failed test result. This should again be looked at by other members of your team to provide a well-balanced outlook on the situation.
Inform the candidate of the result in writing. Avoid any discriminatory biases or language in the communication, explaining clearly why the candidate has failed the check, and whether you will proceed with hiring them or not, along with an expected timescale of action.
04 - What Can I Do If I Fail a Background Check?
It’s possible (and surprisingly common!) for jobseekers to fail a background check, but the severity of the failure can spell the difference between the success of appealing the decision and an all-out rejection of your job application.
Keep in mind that no employer has to hire you, especially if they have good reason to reject your application based on the results of a background check. For example, if you did not declare a criminal conviction or if you lied about your employment history on your CV, the employer has good reason to reject your application following a background check. However, you can contest the result of a failed screening test, especially if you believe you can provide context for why some aspects of the test might have come back with a failed result.
In the UK, there is a formal process of how to dispute a failed background check. A candidate can dispute the results of a check with the background check company, recruitment agency or employer, and provide additional information or context to give more clarity to the situation.
If you believe there is erroneous information on your background check, you can also highlight this. If you believe there is a mistake on your DBS test, you can appeal to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) directly.
05 - How to Avoid Reputational Damage With Screening Tests
Incidents of high-profile reputation damage have been hitting the headlines of late, with huge repercussions for the businesses involved. Scandals involving big names like Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Mohamed Al Fayed certainly capture a huge amount of public attention, and while these are extreme cases of reputational damage they can also serve as a cautionary tale for recruiters and businesses recruiting people at senior level.
In short, hiring at leadership level or for management roles often requires more attention and diligence than recruiting for less senior jobs. In this article we’ve focussed on how to take a course of action in response to a failed screening test, but one of the most important (and overlooked) aspects of this process is the fact that you can only act on what you know about.
With this in mind, it’s paramount to perform an online reputation audit for an individual and to choose background screening technology that will perform the most thorough job possible. AI-assisted software is often the best choice, because this skips the inherent bias of human researchers. It might sound intimidating, but by using a smart screening tool like YOONO you can process a greater volume of data which is then filtered to present you only the most relevant information about a candidate, free from any bias or predisposition.
With the right hiring and HR tools to hand, you can have the confidence that no stone will be left unturned, and that the thoroughness of a background check is matched by an unbiased and impartial approach. Take your background screening to the next level, and make sure you never risk reputational damage again!
