EBI Inc. background check service review

Hiring an applicant for a position at a job can easily turn into a painful and convoluted process. There have always been challenges and pitfalls at every step along the way, from the screening of applicants to the whole interview process. Now there are new difficulties, such as the challenges with COVID-19 and mandated testing requirements, or the need for a background check to now not only encompass prior criminal activity, but also a plethora of social media accounts as well. With a recent hiring surge, the ability to streamline the process has gone from a want to a requirement.

EBI Inc is a company that is designed to deal with these challenges of hiring applicants for your workforce. It offers an array of services, such as background checks, drug testing, criminal record checks, and pre-employment screenings to offload these tasks from your Human Resources department, and outsource them to this company that brings decades of experience with these matters into your company with accreditation from the National Association of Background Screeners (NAPBS). After all, especially smaller HR Depts. will not have the in-house staff to deal with all of these complicated matters. Oh, and in case you were wondering, EBI stands for Employment Background Investigations, which is based in the US in Owings Mills, Maryland.

Features

EBI offers a variety of services that can serve the needs and act as a partner for the screening and onboarding of candidates. It can also be part of the ongoing relationship of a company to manage employees, such as with occupational health, or ongoing drug screening. Other services offered cover areas including onboarding, credit checks, social media screening and background checks among a long list of available options.

Let’s take a closer look at the background checks that EBI offers. We want to point out that EBI does not take the “One size fits all” approach, and rather takes the time to understand your company’s needs. The emphasis here is to understand your existing workflow, and to integrate it fully and easily. With a ridiculous amount of customizations available- we are talking about 55,000 possibilities, EBI can really offer a unique offering to each of its companies that it deals with. For those that don’t know where to start, there are also a number of pre-built screening packages, which may suffice for many organizations that don’t have such special needs. EBI indicates that its background checks have a 99.9% accuracy, and perform “Internal Quality Audits Each Month,” so it can make that statement.

Having a service interruption due to downtime can be anywhere from annoying to catastrophic when in the process of onboarding new candidates. EBI has this covered, and claims an “Industry-leading 99.96% uptime,” making it highly reliable, and dependable.

EBI also has your company for other services, such as what they offer to deal with the challenges of a workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. Need a COVID-19 test and not sure where to get it from? EBI offers not just one but two: an easy to perform saliva swab that gets sent to a lab within 48 hours to obtain a secure result, and a rapid nasal swab test done on site, with a result in 30 minutes. They also have a catalog of masks for outfitting your employees to keep them safe in the workplace. 

Support

EBI does offer direct support options, which are often preferable, and can often resolve a complicated issue. We appreciate that EBI provides both a direct phone number, and also a direct email address for initiating contact for support to a company that uses its services. It is also a nice touch that there is separate direct support via dedicated email and toll free number for candidates should they encounter any issue with their application. The hours of operation are not listed. 

EBI also points out that the support is 100% US based, which users often prefer. It also indicates that 97% of calls are handled by live agents, and 98% of calls get answered within three rings.

Where this falls short is the lack of other support offered as it is somewhat limited. We did find a FAQ with some predone articles. There is also a resource library which had a handful of webinars, and a pair of eBooks, including “Reopening & Rebuilding Your Workplace with Employee Needs & Organizational Culture in Mind”. However, EBI falls short as there was no option for chat assistance, nor a support forum.

Plans and pricing

EBI offers a menu of services that can accommodate a firm looking to outsource a single task, or several. Just like every company is unique in terms of size, geography, sector, and workforce, so will be their needs that EBI could potentially assist with. Therefore, it is not unreasonable that EBI does not indicate pricing on their site, and rather has a contact portal to “Request an Employment Screening Consultation.”

We also want to state that after an extensive search for pricing, we conclude that it is very opaque, and did not find a hint of it anywhere.

Final verdict

EBI is a powerful entry into the background investigation area, with an offering that offers a high degree of customization. We also like the other services offered that complement this, such as employee drug testing, COVID-19 tests, credit checks, and references and credentialing. We would like EBI to be more upfront on its pricing, with some transparency as it is difficult to comment on how expensive this service is to its competitors, and most do provide pricing info without company contact. Overall, EBI does provide a solid offering to this segment of the market, and it is well worth checking out if your company is looking to outsource any of the above tasks.

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