Make Inventory Preparation Fun For Everyone

     “It’s INVENTORY time let’s go have FUN!” There’s a phrase you will never hear. Let’s face it anyone who has been through an inventory knows that it is drudgery. Aside from the counting of merchandise, there is all the preparation that leads up to it. If done properly it is time-consuming and tedious. You and your team are standing on ladders looking on top of fixtures, digging through boxes, in cabinets, and behind fixtures for items that have been misplaced. There is also kneeling to look under gondola base decks, cashier stands or under soft drink coolers for that one little piece of merchandise that rolled under there months ago. Then there are the painstaking tasks that need to be completed such as going through merchandise to make sure everything is properly ticketed. Someone should be spending some time contacting vendors with cut-off dates for bringing in a new product or providing credits for merchandise they are removing. Store managers have to make sure all of the tasks are being planned out, assigning who will complete them and follow up on them. ALL of this is BEFORE inventory night even takes place. Oh did I mention you still have to keep your store operating while you get these projects done? No, it really is not a fun prospect and if your employees get grumpy or dirty and dusty while doing these things they may not be thorough in their assignments. Do your inventory overnight and employees get tired and frazzled and you could wind up having more shortage than you should. Finding methods to get your team on board and keeping them fired up requires making inventory fun.

     How do you make inventory fun and interesting for your employees? There is a variety of ideas store managers can introduce to make the process more engaging for their staff.

  • Almost every business has that one person who is creative and let’s face it super-energetic about fun activities. Find that person, make them your inventory “Fun Captain” and cut them loose. You may even give them a small budget to work with so it is more fun for them too and they feel empowered to make decisions. It will be a load off of your plate. Just be sure that there are brief status meetings you two hold so you can help keep things on track. Sometimes these folks can have grandiose ideas that can be tough to reign in if you don’t stay a little involved.
  • FOOD! Everyone loves food and it can pump up the mood of a team. If you have a “Fun Captain”, ask them to come up with a week of food ideas for each day of prep and inventory night. It doesn’t have to be fancy maybe “Doughnut Monday”, “Candy Corn Tuesday”, “Pretzel Wednesday” and so on, you get my drift. Inventory day should be a bit more special. I have seen everything from fruit, coffee, and soda brought in for energy overnights to sub sandwiches and chips. One place I worked for the store manager brought in breakfast foods at the start of the day and pizzas that afternoon. Be creative!
  • Music. I saw one store that did inventory overnight and since there were no customers they played upbeat music over the P.A. system. Someone from that store would occasionally get on the microphone or phone and pretend to be a DJ. It was lively, it didn’t cost anything and the “DJ” was entertaining and funny.
  • Hold contests. Who doesn’t enjoy being part of a contest? It may be giving a prize to the person who can find merchandise stuck in the oddest location. Maybe it is retail trivia questions focused on shortage and safety issues. A correct answer can be rewarded with a “fun-sized” candy bar. You can purchase those bags in any grocery store and if you sell them then requisition a bag.

There are other ideas you or your “Fun Captain” will come up with, the key is to make it enjoyable for your team. Remember, the more engaged your team is and the more they understand why they are preparing for inventory the better the overall results will be when shrinkage numbers come back.


Preventing Shoplifting The Right Way

The laws in the United States concerning shoplifting undergo changes that in some instances put the strain on the retailers and their profit margins.  The shoplifting law changes in 2014, in California, for example, let retailers in the state feel a sense of vulnerability and hopelessness.  They expressed concerns about the fact that the laws allowed individuals to feel empowered to go into a store and shoplift without getting into too much trouble. 

Those losses are not only detrimental to the profit margins of the store but can mean an increase in the number of shoplifters that can enter the store feeling embolden to steal. Such an increase comes with an increase in violence, and retailers are feeling the change. Proposition 47 passed in 2014 that reduce the penalties for many crimes, shoplifting included a law change that has left many retailers feeling vulnerable.

On the other hand, big retailers such as Wal-Mart, Bloomingdales, and Krogers are being sued for extorting customers.  They accuse customers of shoplifting and then charging them money for the “courtesy” of not calling the police. The customers are bullied into paying for an online class by a company called Corrective Education Company and then the company pays Wal-Mart, Bloomingdales, and Krogers a cut of what they are charging these accused customers.  The practice is insidious and wrong according to the legal company carrying the lawsuit, and customers and retailers have to be aware of this insidious and amoral practice.

Shoplifting is a crime, and retailers are arguably upset by the law changes that make it for them more difficult to do business. But, accusing customers that do not have the financial means to hire legal counsel is preying upon the poor and defenseless, and that is morally wrong.

Protecting a business from shoplifters is the responsibility of the owner and the management team, and no one understands the travail the loss prevention team goes through every day when the store opens its door for business. If, as a store owner, you are asking yourself what is a good solution for the prevention of shoplifting, we have to tell you, you have many.

But, one of the most effective solutions you have at your disposal for the prevention of shoplifting in your businesses is training your personnel and management team.  Research has shown time and again that having trained personnel in your store or business decreases your losses thus increasing your profits.


Stopping Shoplifters Is As Much Attitude As It Is Equipment

We supply and install the best anti-shoplifting equipment made. Checkpoint Systems is the gold standard of Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) equipment. Support is off the chart. Checkpoint Systems has factory Tech’s everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. They have to since the majority of the top retailers in the world are using Checkpoint equipment. These Techs are not sub-contractors. They are skilled EAS, Radio Frequency (RF) experts. As an example, my Sr. Tech Dan is a former Navy Electronics Technician; he worked on highly advanced systems that protect our country.

That’s all good and well but we can install the best equipment using the best people out there but if you do not have the right attitude, you will not have solved your shoplifting problem. You will simply have spent money and felt good about what you purchased but YOUR SHOPLIFTING PROBLEM WILL COME BACK.

You have to instill the right attitude about shoplifting prevention in yourself and your staff. Shoplifters are not afraid of the Checkpoint equipment all by itself. But, they are very afraid of the Checkpoint equipment when it is supported by a trained, knowledgeable staff. The equipment will work. It will notify you when someone tries to steal a protected piece of merchandise. But you have to be on your game long before this happens. Do you know what shoplifters look like? Do you know how to spot them before they steal? You can easily expose a shoplifter in your store with the proper customer service techniques. These skills will not make the shoplifter transparent but will delight your good customers and increase your sales. Good customers love attention, shoplifters hate it.

I believe this so deeply that we at Loss Prevention Systems include free, live shoplifting training as often as you reasonably need it. Staff changes, new manager or supervisor, new employees that are new to retail or your store? Let us train them, free of charge, for the life of your Checkpoint System when you buy it from Loss Prevention Systems.

So you get actual LP training from a former Director of Loss Prevention with over 35 years of experience. FREE!

So if training is the key, why do you still need the Checkpoint System? That is a great question and the answer is simple. The equipment is there to support you when you cannot be everywhere at the same time. Retailers’ biggest expense is labor. If we can keep labor dollars down, we are more profitable. The fact of the matter is that shoplifters seek out and even create situations where they steal when you cannot pay the attention required to spot and deter every shoplifter. By the way, one in ten people that are in your store right now is there to steal from you. That is where the Checkpoint System comes into play. It is working 24/7, does not take breaks, vacations, sick-leave or simply not show up. Checkpoint equipment has a great attitude and is always looking for shoplifters.

Now, what are YOU going to do to change your attitude and start getting the margins from your sales that you deserve? Contact Loss Prevention Systems now and make it happen. Chances are we will actually be able to assist you to begin stopping shoplifters before the system is even delivered and our amazing Techs can install it.


Good Intentions With Bad Outcomes; Retailers Must Prepare For Increased Violence From Shoplifting Gangs

Actions based on good intentions don’t always have good results. One of the most famous of missteps was the Coca-Cola attempt to improve its formula and market “New” Coke. The idea was well-intentioned but the public reception was cool if not outright hostile. According to the website INVESTOPEDIA, “ “Classic Coke” returned to the shelves less than three months after it had been retired.” In the same article, they point out that in 2008 the manufacturer of Motrin found out that there was a problem with the medicine not dissolving properly. Reportedly they did not want to “incur the associated negative publicity, the firm sent out secret shoppers to buy the products off of store shelves, which resulted in a lawsuit in Oregon in 2011.” (“8 Good Intentions With Bad Outcomes”, Lisa Smith, updated December 15, 2017). Laws can have the same problems of unintended consequences, helping one constituency while hurting another.

In an article in LPM Magazine, “Retail Crime In Los Angeles”, May 1, 2018, An example of a law that was intended to help “reduce prison crowding in California’s overwhelmed prisons and provide treatment rather than jail time to qualifying drug offenders” was Proposition 47. How could such a program go wrong? Who would not benefit from such a law? Apparently, retailers are bearing the burden of unforeseen consequences in this case. According to the article part of Proposition 47 also converted “many non-violent offenses, including shoplifting from felonies to misdemeanors.” The story goes on to say that shoplifting offense under $950 result only in a citation to show up in court. Inevitably career and habitual shoplifters are going to learn what the lines are between a misdemeanor and a felony and they are going to take advantage of those delineations.

It seems that shoplifting has dramatically increased in Los Angeles as criminals have found that it is lucrative for them to engage in the crime with minimal cost if they are caught. The ramifications that are being felt include increased monetary losses for retailers due to theft-related shrink. Worse, the story states that violent behavior from shoplifters is seemingly on the rise. Danger has always been a concern for retailers and especially Loss Prevention professionals when stopping a shoplifter(s). Now that potentially violent criminals have been released because of the reclassification of certain crimes the stakes are higher. The story points out that gangs are becoming more active in shoplifting. As mentioned criminals are quick to learn and they learn rapidly when penalties for a crime become less severe.

Violence in shoplifting cases is becoming more pronounced and not simply in Los Angeles. A story on ketv.com by the reporter, Michelle Bandur, Dec. 20, 2017, referenced a group of women boosting merchandise from retailers in the Omaha area. Detective Galloway interviewed in the report, “said they don’t avoid confrontation and may resort to violence.” He said they have received reports that these women will, “… load bags in front of employees and sometimes I’ve been told by employees they will taunt them.” He went on to describe incidents of the members of the group knocking people to the floor. They have attempted to run over others in a parking lot if they noticed a person trying to take a picture of their license plate. These incidents support data from the National Retail Federation 2017 Organized Retail Crime Survey. According to the survey, 98.5% of responding retailers reported “ORC (Organized Retail Crime) gangs are just as aggressive or more aggressive and violent when compared with last year. 26.5% said that gangs are much more aggressive than in the previous year (pg. 10). If these numbers from the NRF Survey are true, when coupled with Proposition 47 retailers in L.A. may be in for some very rocky times in years to come.

Retailer owners must become familiar with methods to prevent shoplifting without endangering employees in the process. Tried and true methods such as aggressive customer service may not be effective deterrents any longer. Adjustments by Managers may include carefully reviewing hours of operation and not staying open as late at night. If cameras are not in place owners may want to install them to have quality video and pictures for police in case of a serious incident. Starting a Retail Crime Prevention organization in partnership with local police can help identify theft trends and organized and violent persons. Finally, retail theft prevention training from Loss Prevention Systems Inc. can provide more information on how to stop theft and keep your employees safe from harm.

Prop. 47 may have been well-intentioned but it has opened up a Pandora’s Box of problems for California retailers.  Through proper training, owners and managers can position store teams to be ready for security and safety issues now and in the future.


Reviewing Your Store Policies Today

Reviewing your store policies today and training your employees about the ramification of not following them properly is imperative. The consequences of not following those policies properly are too costly to postpone.  Employees, as they are human, try to use shortcuts or in some instances, take the easy way out while doing some chores without thinking it may affect the bottom line at the end of the day.  Profits for a store cannot be thought of as profits for the owner only, employment and benefits for the employees are inherently tied to those of the owner.  If the owner must close the store for loses, the employees lose as well.

Is it time then to review the policies and procedures the employees must follow while working at the store? You bet.  If you do not think it is necessary to do a complete training workshop today, you must at least remind them of the policies, the procedures, and their responsibility to stay calm and professional at all times. Safety plays an important topic when talking about staying calm and professional while dealing with a shoplifter.  Their safety and the safety of the customers cannot be jeopardized by carelessness or by improper behavior. By reminding them of this important and oftentimes forgotten topic, you are ensuring fatalities or brutal behavior do not occur at your store.

Click here to read about a news story and the fact that many retail shop owners deal with this issue on a daily basis.  The return policies of any store have to be continuously checked and tried to asses their effectiveness, otherwise, you may be dealing with a deficit you cannot recover from.


 

Inventory Software

Inventory in a retail store can offer the management and the loss prevention team a clear picture of whether their efforts are working or they need to modify something entirely different. 

After a busy day or during the holidays, inventory plays a very important role in your store.  A visual inventory can give you only a glimpse of what is happening, but a true inventory can offer you a real picture, even if it’s more expensive for your store. 

There are many software programs that can aid you with the inventory of your store, and even if that becomes a little costly for you, it will pay to know what’s selling, what is not, and what is being stolen.

A software program will aid you by tracking packages that are being delivered, on transit, items which expiration dates are approaching, and items that are selling well and need to be re-stocked. An inventory software program can help you make decisions that otherwise could take weeks to put in place.  What items to display, or put on sale, which items to have discounted and which items are selling so well you need to put an order in place.

A simple Google search can deliver a list of the most promising software inventory programs that can help you.  Those programs can offer an array of features you may not even know you need, and the companies selling those software programs can offer you pricing for you to compare other programs and their features. Do you know an owner of a retail store that is using a software program? Have you asked them how they like it? If you know someone that is already using an inventory software program, you are in luck.  It can save you time and perhaps money when you decide you are ready to purchase one yourself.

There are many small business owners that own a retail store that has many issues they do not know how to solve. Starting with problems with personnel, management, and loss prevention techniques, the issues can be many and varied.

Address those issues before you buy any software programs to help you with the inventory of your store. What are some of the strength and weaknesses you need to address with the personnel of your store? Is the management team coordinating with the loss prevention team? Is there a loss prevention team? Are they addressing the issues or just pushing them aside for other people to tackle? Not all problems can be solved by buying software or by hiring more employees.  There are many problems that can be solved by being vigilant and by addressing those problems without hesitation. A software program can help, but that is only one key aspect of running a store.


Keeping Track of Sales And Customers This Year For Next Year’s Summer Planning

It is hard to believe but summer is almost here! What are you doing about it? As crazy as the question may sound there is a reason I ask. What are you doing that will be different than what you did last summer? Do you know what it was you did to inspire additional sales last year? Maybe you didn’t do anything at all differently. Maybe you added a new piece of summer merchandise to your merchandising strategy. How did that item do in sales? Was it a blockbuster for you? On a similar note, how was the customer foot traffic in your store? Did you see an increase in the number of patrons last summer over the rest of the year? If you aren’t asking the questions then you are probably flying by the seat of your pants and that is not going to be beneficial to you at all. Sales tracking and Customer Counting can assist you in exponentially growing your sales.

Adding products to your merchandise lines may be a good idea. Perhaps last summer you purchased 100 units of a new brand of suntan lotion to supplement your summer lineup. Did you keep track of how many of those units you sold at full price? Did you wind up taking markdowns on them in order to get them to move? You may have eventually been out of the merchandise but if you were not tracking how many you sold by the week you may have lost money if they all went at the end of the season at or below cost. By failing to follow sales of seasonal items you could develop a false picture of how a product moved and make the costly mistake of carrying it again the following year. One aside to this; be sure that seasonal merchandise is in a prominent location. Sticking this merchandise on a back endcap or in the main run is not going to produce the results you are seeking. This can also give you a poor picture of how the item could really have driven sales had it been in a more visible location.

Customer foot traffic is also an important tool for summer planning for the next year. If one of your intended purposes in adding a summer product line in your store is to drive up sales you need to know whether it has the intended effect. If you are keeping track of customer counts you can determine if a new product is drawing in more shoppers. A spike in customer counts can be compared to sales tracking of a new product(s). If there appears to be a correlation in the data you can make preparations for the next summer and plan for additional sales by bringing back those summer items. If a group of summer products proved profitable and drew in more customers then add to it with new summer goods. It would also be a good idea to review those sales figures and add more people on shifts. You may find that customer counts proved to be much higher than sales transactions were. If this is the case it is possible that your store could have lost sales by having insufficient cashiers or sales floor staff to provide assistance. Customer counting can also benefit your store with a breakdown of the time of day patrons were shopping. This provides flexibility in adding staff at peak times rather than adding people for an entire day if it isn’t necessary.  Though it may take time to plan it out using the information you have collected from sales tracking and customer counting the payoff will be seen in sales increases.

A website, workzone.com, had an article, “45 Planning Quotes To Help You Reach Your Goals” by Steve Pogue. One of the quotes was from Warren Buffet, “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree long ago.” Another quote attributed to Robert H. Schuller, “Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.” So friends, spectacular sales next summer will be dependent on how much preparation you are willing to put into planning today. Dedicate time now in reviewing your seasonal specialty item sales and how many customers entered your business and create a plan that will dazzle you with results next summer.


Inventory Over? Scrutinize The Results If They Seem Askew

Some people in retail look forward to it and some dread it. What am I talking about? Inventory! From the planning stages and meetings with the inventory counting team to the actual inventory day it can all be a lot to accomplish even for the best of planners. But what happens when you get through the actual counting phase? What comes next? You wait for the results. You may get preliminary results immediately but for larger stores booked inventory may take several weeks and they have teams to analyze the results. As a small retailer you may have to analyze the reports yourself but do you really understand what you are looking for? Are your results accurate? Stores have to keep track of what they have on hand and owners need to know where shortage has taken place and how it has happened.

A detailed review of the inventory results is important. They can identify areas that may be indicators of poor vendor service. If your store sells groceries, snacks, soft drinks or adult beverages you are most likely served by direct store delivery vendors. If a shortage is somewhat high in these departments you might not be receiving all of the credits you are supposed to receive. This is not necessarily an indicator of theft but it could be. It may be simply poor scanning and crediting for merchandise a vendor is removing from the store. Those credits could be due to product getting ready to expire or that has expired. It may be it was a promotional product that isn’t selling in the quantities the vendor was hoping for. Whatever the reason, the representative could have miscued an entry, for example, scanning a partial pallet of sodas and keying in a quantity of 10 versus 100. If the vendor is in a hurry and no one caught the error at the time it could be costing your store a lot of money.

While we are talking about administrative errors causing shortage it is important that store owners take a look at all of their billings. In a big box retail store, we had monthly P/L (profit/loss) statements that showed the dollar amounts of merchandise shipped to us for each department. One year when inventory results revealed a high shortage result in our shoe department I went back through all of the P/L statements and found an unusual billing amount. I tried to correlate it to a seasonal reset or specific event but was unable to pin it to anything in particular. I sent my concern to our inventory analysts who reviewed the information and found we had been overcharged $10,000 in the shoe department that particular month. Review P/L statements or invoices for potential errors if inventory results seem out of line.

Look at the departments that are showing the shortage. Do they look like areas that would be prone to theft or could there be other administrative issues involved? For example, if you own an office supply store and you have a high shrinkage in printer ink cartridges there is a strong probability this is a theft concern. On the other hand, shrink in foam project boards could be due to process issues. Are individual foam boards shipped in multi-pack shrink wrap? It could be the items are not being separated and a bulk set is improperly sold as a single unit at the register. Have individual units been damaged and unsellable but not properly marked out of stock before tossing them? Foam boards are probably not being stolen but improper handling is costing money to your store just the same.

Certainly, theft has to be a consideration in the review of inventory results. But one must be careful not to attribute ALL shortage to theft. Doing so may keep you from impacting up to 26.7% of your losses in the next inventory cycle. According to the 2017 National Retail Security Survey, 21.3% of a shortage is due to administrative and paperwork errors and 5.4% is the result of vendor fraud or errors. That said it is important to dig into potential theft concerns that are impacting your store. Are you the target of shoplifters? Do you have an employee theft problem you did not realize existed? Getting a handle on theft must be part of your follow-up in creating a shortage action plan to improve shrinkage. Consultation with Loss Prevention Systems Inc. is a good starting point for finding a solution to all of your shortage concerns, theft included.

 If you take inventory and find you are missing SKU’s because results are askew, take time to dig into the findings. Knowing where shortage happened this year and taking steps to correct it will give improved results next year.


Protecting Your Profits This Summer

In many parts of the country, school will be out soon and the plans for a summer vacation will come sooner than expected. And even though an article in Money magazine states that 56% of Americans haven’t had a vacation in 12 months, the place that most Americans visit when they Do take a vacation is Florida.

Vacationers are a good thing for local economies.  Hotels, restaurants, and other businesses that depend on vacationers see an increase in sales and profits during the summer months due to the increase in customers.  Retail stores see an increase in walk-in customers too but have to be careful to protect some items in the store if they want to preserve those profits.

What are some of the items you need to protect during the summer months?

  1. Swimwear and sportswear – Tagging your swimwear and sportswear with an Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) tag can help you prevent the shoplifting of that article.
  2. Hats, visors, and baseball caps are all items that are in demand during these months due to the weather. If you are a store frequented by tourists, displaying these items where they can be overseen by the cashiers could prevent them from being stolen.
  3. Sunglasses – There are many things that are stolen every year that make no sense, but sunglasses are small, beautiful accessories that are sought by everyone.  They can be easily stolen because of their size, and perhaps the accessibility the shoplifter has to pocket them without being caught. There are Enhanced Performance Labels that are placed directly on the UPC label for items such as sunglasses, makeup, and other small items to deter the shoplifter from taking them.
  4. Sunscreens and mosquito repellents are items that many people on vacation need.  These items are small and easily concealed in people’s purses, oversize shirts or even the pockets of their clothing.  Placing an Enhanced Performance Label on these items can greatly reduce the chance they will be stolen.
  5. Drinks and especially alcoholic drinks are easy items to steal, especially for the young people with no I.D

Many retail stores’ profit margins are slim,  and shoplifting does not only put a dent in their profits, it can also mean bankruptcy for some of them.  As you train your employees and make them aware of the issues in the store, shoplifting has to be at the top of them. If employees and the management of the store work together to keep a vigilant eye for shoplifters and keep an up to the date inventory of the store, they will prevent shoplifting and increase your profit margins.


Stop The Flow Of Bad Employees!

The IT world has a phrase “garbage in, garbage out”. The same concept applies to hiring new employees. If you do not put effort into selecting a new employee, then chances are you will be disappointed down the road.

In my 40+ years of loss prevention experience, I have investigated and interrogated a little over 2300 employees for theft. When you have seen that much theft, you begin to look at the source. Loss Prevention folks tend to be the ones catching the sludge coming out of the end of the pipe. We are dealing with employees that no one else can deal with. Normal management techniques do not work. So I began looking back up the pipeline, to the source. Loss Prevention starts at the time an applicant even thinks about putting in an application for work with your company.

Look at it as filtering out as many bad people as we possibly can in this process. When a person visits your business, in person or the employment page on your website to put in an application what do they see? It should be a clean image. Do you drug test? That wording or sign makes many folks that know they will not pass a drug screen turn around right there. So the filtering process has started.

Next, do they see that you will do a thorough background check? Criminal records check, credit check, education verification, sex offender register, driver’s license check (if applicable), previous employment verification and so on. A person with a clean “record” or with minor issues only, will not be concerned. However, the folks with poor records may simply move on. So we just filtered out more. These are people we are not interested in talking to and would be a waste of our time.

If you have our Applicant Management Center (AMC) solution, then the next step is that the candidate will fill out your custom application online. So instead of getting paper documents with handwriting that may be poor and full of inaccuracies, you are getting a file with data that you can read and respond to. One of the documents that can be included in this process is the release of background checks. Folks that have a bad record that thought you really might not check are now faced with signing a legal document. They know that if they lied on your AMC application, that you will find out. We just filtered out some more people we do not want to hire. The good folks can then attach their resume or any other documents you require.

With the Applicant Management Center, you get an organized, readable packet that you can review online and print out if necessary. I should mention at this point that the Applicant Management Center archives all of your applicant’s information. So you can go back even years later to retrieve the information.

Upon your review, you can email the applicant to set up a phone or in-person interview, ask questions or send a “no thank you, not interested note”. If you decide to go forward with an interview, then you should have already taken our personal, FREE, LIVE two-hour seminar:

Armed with the techniques we teach, you are better suited to get more truthful answers to your questions. For established Loss Prevention Systems customers, we conduct this training as reasonably often as you need it – free of charge. We train you how to set up the interview and how to ask questions. For example, an applicant most likely will tell you if they have stolen from previous employers. You just need to know how to ask.

Next in the filtering process is to actually run a background investigation. If you have our AMC, then all you do is click a box and the background checks begin. For example, if the checks you want include a drug screen then your applicant is contacted through email with a link to set up an appointment at a lab near them (we are Nationwide). Once that process is completed, then you receive the results automatically in AMC.

Criminal records checks would also start. We like to run a Social Security Number (SSN) Trace before we run criminal records. An SSN Trace is basically the “header” off of the applicant’s credit history. It does not provide any financial information. It does, however, give us the addresses where the person has lived. We can then check those jurisdictions for criminal records. That way, if the applicant omits a place they have lived where they have a criminal record, we should find it anyway. SSN Traces are VERY inexpensive to run. We do an actual “Court House” search, not some off-beat “database” masquerading as a records check.  Many States allow for Statewide records checks (all counties & cities). But there are some that do not. At that point, we search County records.

So all of the checks have been run and as the results available in your Applicant Management Center are updated, you are notified. You can continue with the process, if necessary another interview, additional questions, job offer or letting the candidate know they have not been selected.

AMC is very inexpensive to onboard, our background checks very competitively priced with some of the fastest turnarounds in the industry. If you would like to try AMC, we will set you up for a FREE SIX MONTH TRIAL, no obligation. You would simply pay for any background checks you request along the way. However, you do not need to request any background checks to have our Applicant Management Center.

Contact us today for more information and to get started.