Slow law enforcement background investigations can cost you top candidates. Follow these steps to simplify the process, reduce admin work, and speed up public safety hiring.
Article Highlights
10 Steps to Streamline Law Enforcement Background Investigations:- Simplify Application Submissions
- Automate Social Media and Credit Checks
- Secure Data Management
- Flag Gaps in Employment
- Track All Investigations in One Place
- Use Real-Time Updates
- Ensure Consistency in Hiring Decisions
- Collaborate Across Teams Securely
- Monitor Hiring Progress in Real Time
- Measure and Optimize
Thorough law enforcement background investigations are critical to finding only the most qualified candidates to serve your community. These investigations safeguard public trust, maintain department integrity, and protect against future liability.
Yet, for many agencies – especially those still relying on paper files, email threads, and disconnected digital tools – the process is painfully slow. Investigations can take weeks or months, drowning investigators (and candidates) in paperwork and delaying hiring decisions. And in today’s competitive hiring market, that’s enough to lose great candidates to faster-moving agencies.
10 Steps to Streamline Law Enforcement Background Investigations
The good news: there’s a better way. By rethinking workflows, adopting the right tools, and standardizing processes, you can streamline police hiring investigations without compromising quality or compliance.
Here are 10 steps to make your police background investigation process faster, more consistent, and easier for everyone involved.
1. Simplify Application Submissions
One of the biggest bottlenecks in background investigations for law enforcement starts before an investigator even touches a file: the application stage. Long, confusing applications and paper-based forms can slow everything down and frustrate candidates.
Candidates today are more tech-savvy, having been raised with advancing technology, so efficient, electronic application processes aren’t just preferred – they’re expected.
Keep applicants interested by using user-friendly, digital personal history statements (PHSs) that seamlessly carry applicant data through each stage of the hiring process. By requiring fields on the form, you can reduce the number of incomplete applications received, saving time once wasted on tracking down missing information. Digital, mobile-friendly forms also lower abandonment rates, making it more likely you’ll receive completed applications on time.
When integrated with your applicant tracking system, this approach eliminates redundant data entry and ensures key details, such as demographics, education, and work history, flow automatically into the PHS forms. Overall, doing so improves the candidate experience and streamlines police hiring by eliminating redundancy on applications.
2. Automate Social Media and Credit Checks
Manual social media and credit checks can eat up hours in law enforcement background investigations. Switching to an automated tool integrated directly into your investigation platform eliminates the need for separate requests, emails, and file uploads.
Effective social media and credit check tools find and review each candidate’s complete online presence, ranging from blog posts and article mentions to social media posts, comments, and more. Then, the system automatically categorizes these findings into a comprehensive report, flagging anything that needs review.
Automation not only speeds things up in public safety hiring but also standardizes the review process, reducing unconscious biases that may vary from one investigator to another. Results can be presented in a consistent format for easier analysis, while built-in compliance safeguards ensure you meet FCRA and data privacy requirements.
3. Secure Data Management
With sensitive applicant information involved, secure data handling isn’t optional; it’s a legal and ethical necessity. Moving to a CJIS-aligned (Criminal Justice Information Services), cloud-based system guarantees that applicant files are encrypted at rest and in transit. The CJIS system is put in place by the FBI and outlines comprehensive security requirements.
It’s also important to consider background investigation tools for police that have role-based access controls to limit sensitive information to authorized personnel, along with detailed audit trails that track every file change.
Having software that backs up your every move gives you confidence in remaining compliant. Plus, storing your entire police background investigation process in one centralized, secure place also eliminates the risk of lost files, unsecured email threads, or shared login credentials.
4. Flag Gaps in Employment
Verifying employment, or lack thereof, is an essential part of all background investigation tools for police – and inconsistencies in employment history is one of the critical police officer background investigation red flags agencies may encounter when evaluating a candidate’s suitability.
By hand, this is tedious work. But with tools that automatically flag employment gaps or anomalies, investigators can prioritize efficient follow-up.
From there, a digital background investigation system can link directly to previous employers or references, streamlining the verification process. Every action is logged to create a clear documentation trail for compliance. All of this makes it easier and faster for both investigators and candidates to complete a thorough, accurate investigation.
5. Track All Investigations in One Place
Disorganized case tracking is one of the top reasons agencies experience delays. That’s why, instead of juggling spreadsheets, email folders, and file cabinets, one of the biggest improvements you can make to your background investigation process is to consolidate everything into a centralized, online dashboard.
This ensures case files, notes, and supporting documentation are easy to find, both during the investigation and years later in an archive. In a digital, cloud-based system, investigators, supervisors, and HR can search by name, case ID, or investigator.
Forget about sifting through emails and paper packets to find documentation. Instead, every candidate’s dashboard securely houses all of their files and information, ensuring you always have quick access to the information you need.
6. Use Real-Time Updates
Using a manual, paper-based process, applicants and stakeholders are often left in the dark, leading to repeated check-ins and unavoidable delays in the law enforcement background investigations.
Instead of risking wasted time on manual outreach to candidates and command staff PHS form progress, a digital background investigation tool can automate status updates for applicants and internal stakeholders.
With real-time communication tools built into your process, applicants can log in to a secure portal to see their status, upload requested documents, or respond to investigator questions. This enables investigators to track their progress on PHS forms and follow-up if a candidate gets stuck on a specific section, reducing candidate drop-off and builds trust.
A greater level of transparency into the candidate’s side of the process also benefits internal stakeholders. Command staff can get recurring updates without chasing down investigators, saving everyone time and eliminating tedious tasks.
7. Ensure Consistency in Hiring Decisions
When each investigator uses their own methods, results can vary widely, and inconsistencies can lead to bias or liability issues. High-level software provides a step-by-step guide on what to do next during a law enforcement background investigation, ensuring no page goes unturned.
By implementing software with standardized workflows and PHS templates, agencies can ensure every investigation follows the same steps. You can also build structured criteria and disqualifier tracking into the process to ensure consistency across every investigator.
The right system also offers built-in review steps to ensure compliance. This level of documentation not only supports fair hiring but also strengthens the defensibility of hiring decisions.
8. Collaborate Across Teams Securely
Background investigations often require input from multiple parties, including HR, command staff, and investigators. But when case documents are scattered and disorganized across paper files and digital folders, it’s difficult to work securely and effectively. Sharing logins or emailing sensitive information back and forth creates risk and slows collaboration.
Adopting a digital tool that allows secure, role-based access to background investigations makes it easier for multiple team members to work on the same case. Each individual only has visibility to the information that’s relevant to their role, improving data security and removing extra noise that could cause distractions.
Plus, a centralized system supports collaboration in real time without the risk of overwriting each other’s work. This eliminates version confusion and keeps everything in one secure location for each stakeholder to access as needed.
9. Monitor Hiring Progress in Real Time
Knowing exactly where each case stands and spotting bottlenecks early is key to speeding up the hiring process. If you can’t track how long investigations take and which part of the process is causing slowdowns, you’ll never know how to make the process smoother.
With a system that offers dashboard-style reporting, agencies can track each investigator’s workload distribution and case status, see which stages of the investigation take the longest, and identify patterns in disqualification data.
These insights empower admins to redistribute work or adjust processes proactively, before they become bigger issues, and improve future investigations for internal teams and candidates alike.
10. Measure and Optimize
Finally, background investigations shouldn’t be a “set it and forget it” process. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) like investigation duration, completion rates, and applicant satisfaction, agencies can see what’s working and evaluate opportunities for continued improvement.
Comparing current metrics to historical benchmarks helps leadership measure improvement over time. Gathering feedback from investigators, HR staff, and applicants adds valuable context, enabling continuous refinement of workflows to drive a shorter time-to-hire.
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10 Steps Infographic for Easy Reference and Sharing Download the 10 Steps to Streamline Law Enforcement Background Investigations infographic now for a quick reference guide for these essential tips to improve and streamline police hiring. |
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Public Safety Software for Easier Background Investigations
Following these 10 steps will help your agency reduce administrative burdens, improve transparency, and hire faster – all while maintaining the integrity of your investigations. If you have the chance to hire the cream of the crop out of thousands of applicants, don’t lose out due to slow, outdated processes. Do it while saving time and using data to continually improve efficiency, compliance, and collaboration.
For many agencies, the fastest path to implementing these best practices is adopting law enforcement background investigation software like Vetted from PowerDMS. Vetted centralizes case management, automates repetitive tasks, and provides real-time visibility into every stage of the investigation.
Agencies using Vetted report:
- 50% faster background investigation completion times
- 25% higher personal history statement completion rates
- Better collaboration between HR, investigators, and applicants
- Secure, compliant storage and sharing of sensitive data
By centralizing everything into one secure platform, Vetted removes the guesswork, eliminates manual errors, and keeps investigations moving so you can focus on hiring the right people for the job.
Learn how modern tools like Vetted can transform your law enforcement background investigations by consolidating data, eliminating manual tasks, and providing real-time visibility to keep cases on track.
