What is the Fastest Way to Get a Background Check?

Last Updated: 

October 20, 2025

As your business booms and scales, you must find multiple employees as soon as possible to run your company smoothly. However, hiring just any candidate isn’t enough. 

To protect your company and workforce, you must ensure that the new hires are qualified, competent, reliable, and a good fit for their job roles.

And running a background check is the best way to find the right candidates.

However, the background screening process involves multiple elements, which may slow down the actual hiring process.

But don’t worry. There are multiple ways to speed up the vetting process.

In this article, we will show you six ways to complete the background check as soon as possible and hire the right people for your company.

Let’s dig in.

Key Takeaways on Getting a Background Check Quickly

  1. Find a Reliable Partner: You should team up with a trustworthy background check service to get accurate, up-to-date, and legally compliant information quickly. This ensures you stay within FCRA guidelines.
  2. Secure Candidate Consent: Always get a candidate’s permission before starting a check. You can do this by including a digital FCRA disclosure form in the job application to get consent on the spot.
  3. Collect Correct ID Data: To prevent delays, you must gather the applicant’s complete and accurate identification details, including their full legal name, date of birth, and SSN.
  4. Integrate Your Systems: You can make the vetting process more efficient by connecting your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with your background check provider’s platform.
  5. Automate Manual Tasks: Speed up the process and reduce human error by automating repetitive jobs like sending out disclosures, authorisations, and FCRA adverse action notices.
  6. Train Your HR Team: Ensure your HR department knows how to submit background check requests correctly. You can create a checklist to help them gather all necessary information accurately.
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1. Find a Trustworthy Background Check Partner

Before you run a background check on someone, you should find a reliable background check service and partner with it. This will help you validate the candidate information faster and speed up the vetting process.

With a trustworthy background checker, you will always have accurate and up-to-date information about the candidates on your table quickly.

What’s more, a reliable provider knows about the ins and outs of the regulations related to the background checks. This way, you and your company will always stay out of legal trouble. And you can review the employee's background lawfully.

No more worries about breaking federal and state laws. With the right partner, you will always get FCRA-compliant background reports within a few days.

2. Get the Candidate’s Consent and Submit It

You should always get the candidates’ consent during the job application process to run a simple background check on them. To do that, you can either:

  • Create a digital copy of the FCRA disclosure and attach it to the job application. This way, the applicants can give their consent for a background search on the spot.
  • Or you can send the consent form along with the FCRA disclosure to the applicant via email. Make it clear that to continue, the applicant needs to give consent for a general background check.

This will give you complete authority and legal right to run a simple background check on the candidates. To proceed, send the candidate's details and a copy of the consent to your provider.

3. Get the Right Identification Data from the Candidates

If you don’t get the right identification data from your applicants, checking the background will be a very hard job. And this can lead to unexpected delays.

To avoid this, you need to get the candidate’s complete identification data.

So, during the job application process, ask the applicants for the following data:

  • The applicant’s complete legal name
  • Date of birth
  • SSN
  • Digitally signed authorisation forms

4. Integrate Your Applicant Tracking System with Your Background Checking Service Provider

The applicant tracking system, or ATS, is already helping your business streamline the entire hiring process. Why don’t you combine your ATS with your background check service provider’s platform?

You can speed up the vetting process of the applicants by integrating the background checking tool into your company’s ATS.

This will make hiring the right candidate much more efficient and reduce delays.

5. Automate the Repetitive Tasks

The vetting process usually has a lot of repetitive, manual tasks that consume a lot of time and HR resources. What’s more, humans are prone to making errors during the submission and data entry phases. 

All these factors can cause the background checking process to be delayed by days, if not weeks.

To save time, eliminate human errors, and speed up the vetting process, you must automate the manual, repetitive tasks. The market has a lot of apps that can help you with this.

To speed things up, you should consider automating the following background check tasks:

  • Screening result delivery
  • FCRA adverse action notices
  • Disclosers
  • Authorizations

6. Train Your HR Department to Submit Proper Background Check Requests

Finally, you must train your company’s HR staff to follow all the steps required to submit a background check request and complete the vetting process.

To make things easier, you can create a checklist. The checklist will contain all the necessary information the company needs to gather and compile to prevent delays during the screening process.

They must learn to submit the relevant information accurately to the screening tool or the screening agency to speed up the vetting process.

Conclusion

With a solid screening process, your company can hire reliable, capable, and morally upright employees. This will help you build a safe and harmonious workforce that will help your business grow.

To avoid the headache of slow background checks and speed up the hiring process, you must:

  • Find a reliable background screening provider
  • Get the complete candidate profiles
  • Get the applicant’s consent quickly and digitally
  • Automate repetitive tasks
  • And train your HR staff

Do this, and you can get the background check reports on your table as soon as possible.

FAQs for What is the Fastest Way to Get a Background Check?

Why is getting a candidate's consent so important?

Obtaining a candidate's consent is a legal requirement under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). It gives you the legal authority to perform the background check and protects your company from potential legal issues. Without it, you cannot proceed.

What specific information do I need from an applicant to avoid delays?

To ensure a smooth process, you need the applicant's complete legal name, date of birth, Social Security Number (SSN), and digitally signed authorisation forms. Incomplete or incorrect information is a common cause of delays.

Can I use my current HR software to speed up background checks?

Yes, you can. Integrating your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with your background check provider’s service streamlines the entire workflow. This connection allows for a more efficient transfer of information and reduces manual data entry.

How does automation help make background checks faster?

Automation handles repetitive, time-consuming tasks like sending disclosures, delivering screening results, and issuing adverse action notices. This not only saves your HR team significant time but also minimises the risk of human error that could slow things down.

What is the most critical first step for a fast background check?

Your first step should be partnering with a dependable background screening provider. A good partner, such as the team at Robinwaite, ensures the information you receive is accurate, compliant with all regulations, and delivered promptly.

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