ATLANTA, (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Advantage, the global leader in background check and drug screening solutions, today released the first part of its 2020 Trends Report. The eagerly awaited research helps HR, legal and finance professionals mitigate risk by benchmarking screening practices. The research draws its conclusions from customer surveys cross-referenced with aggregate data from First Advantage’s 71 million annual global searches in 2019.
The report reveals trends across First Advantage’s areas of expertise, including criminal checks, education and employment verifications and drug screening. For example, background screening, on the whole, is up in every region throughout the globe, but the U.S. and India saw the largest growth by volume. Screening volume growth is especially high in the transportation vertical (27 percent), followed by retail (24 percent) and healthcare (15 percent). Other factors – such as seasonality – impact volume, as well as an increased number of searches per candidates (18 percent).
Social screening is also on the rise. In 2019, 4 percent of survey respondents said they had enabled it, and an additional 2 percent said they plan to enable it in 2020. Customers are also responding to changing trends in drug screening. While lab-based urine tests are still the most common testing method by a significant margin, the use of saliva-based tests is on the rise. FULL RELEASE