Now in its seventh year, the First Advantage Global Trends Report continues to be a vital hiring and compliance resource for organisations worldwide. Our report is comprised of data sourced from First Advantage customers around the globe. It identifies the background screening elements most important to customers, while also highlighting key takeaways you can use to help guide your future background check strategies.
Now let’s uncover several foundational themes, including innovative strategies many successful businesses are using to transform their candidate experiences and increase their background check efficiency.
For a deeper dive, download the full report.
5 Key Insights from Our 2025 Global Trends Report
As employers, you want to be well-informed and confident in your hiring decisions. From rescreening to digital identity and more, this year’s trends report discusses the evolving screening landscape and what you should be aware of to remain efficient and competitive.
Let’s hear from Joelle Smith, President, First Advantage, for an overview of the top findings, then explore them throughout this blog.
Discover more as we delve into five key areas shaping employment background checks today:
- Speed and Evaluating Future Risk Are Top Background Screening Priorities
There’s been a global shift in the factors customers prioritise in background checks. Whilst risk was the top priority for the past two years, speed has now edged out cost and risk as the most critical screening factor among customers across regions.
Advances in automation technology are driving this change, enabling faster turnaround times that help companies achieve four main objectives:
- Recruit more effectively in competitive markets
- Improve the candidate experience
- Onboard talent faster
- Maintaining compliance with applicable laws
However, when customers were asked to rank the reasons they conduct background screening, evaluating future risk emerged as the clear winner, surpassing job qualification, regulatory compliance and ensuring brand protection. This underscores the growing importance for organisations to proactively prepare for ever-evolving hiring standards, while ensuring that background screening is carried out in a timely and efficient manner. Partnering with a trusted screening provider can help achieve this.
Key takeaway: Achieving faster background screening while evaluating future risk is a top priority for customers in the Asia-Pacific region. However, it’s essential to balance speed with the need to manage hiring risk and cost. For instance, faster searches may reduce time and cost but could increase hiring risks if the screening scope is too narrow. Organisations should align their screening programs with relevant factors.
- What Matters Most?
In the Asia Pacific region, we asked organisations about their main reason for conducting background screening. 33% of survey respondents said that better evaluation of future risk is their top priority, followed by ensuring job qualifications, cited 28% of respondents.
According to the latest ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey, hiring confidence in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region strengthened in Q2 2025, with the outlook rising by 3% compared to both the previous quarter and Q2 2024. This upward trend suggests growing optimism in the region’s labour market, likely driven by a focus on sustainable growth and mitigating future risk through more strategic hiring practices.
Key takeaway: Organisations in the APAC region see background screening as a tool supporting informed hiring decisions. It helps employers make the right long-term hiring choices by reducing uncertainty and providing confidence that a candidate is a solid investment. This is especially important in a region aiming for greater stability.
- A Global Identity First Approach
Our Global Trends Report revealed that government ID discrepancies remain relatively low in APAC compared to EMEA and LATAM. Within the region, Singapore showed the highest rate of discrepancies.
While countries like India, China, and Australia each have distinct ID verification processes, they all serve the same fundamental purpose: to establish and validate identity. This variety underscores the importance of flexible solutions that can adapt to local requirements while maintaining global consistency.
Globally, First Advantage supports a wide range of ID verification options tailored to regional and industry-specific needs. As digital identity solutions gain traction, we’re helping organisations reduce identity fraud, accelerate hiring, and deliver a more seamless candidate experience.
Key takeaway: Embracing an identity-first approach enhances data accuracy in background checks and onboarding, making it a best practice for global employers.
- Criminal History Check Remain Central to Screening
Criminal history check continues to be a vital part of background screening programs around the world. Thanks to advances in automation and touchless processing, turnaround times for these searches are improving in many countries.
In APAC, crime rates vary significantly from one country to another. With a population of approximately 4.3 billion (over 60% of the global population), the region sees a diverse range of crime types. Ultimately, your company’s internal policy should determine which checks are necessary for your hiring process.
Whilst criminal background checks are not mandatory in most countries, having in place a robust criminal background screening helps mitigate risks and supports more informed hiring decisions. Across all regions, criminal screening should remain an essential component of nearly every customer’s background screening program.
Key takeaway: As types of crimes and legal requirements vary across APAC and other regions, criminal history checks remain a critical safeguard in the hiring process. Even when not legally required, conducting these checks helps organisations reduce risk, protect their reputation, and make more informed hiring decisions.
- Rescreening as a Critical Risk Management Solution
Does your background screening stop when new hires start Day One on the job? Rescreening is crucial for employers to monitor changes associated with employees over time and help ensure alignment with company standards, while also mitigating potential risks that may arise post-hire.
About half of First Advantage’s rescreening customers re–screen all their employees, typically triggered by factors such as time-based, event-based, regulatory, compliance, and contractual requirements. Insights from these rescreening activities enable customers to respond in line with internal policies and business needs.
The First Advantage Strategic Consulting team recently conducted case studies on customer rescreening programs across different industries. While the rate of reportable records in the rescreened population was generally lower than the average pre-employment rate, rescreening still identified new reportable records in each instance.
These results highlight the value rescreening can bring to employers, regardless of industry.
Key takeaway: Companies are increasingly recognising the importance of post-hire and periodic rescreening for overall risk management. Rescreening programs can be customised to employee roles and responsibilities, ensuring that searches are executed effectively to mitigate risks and support compliance.
Get Additional Insights to Transform Your Screening Program
First Advantage recommends a thorough annual review of your screening program. This review should consider the latest product enhancements, industry trends, and regulatory changes impacting your organisation.
Here’s a recap of the key trends from this year’s trends report:
- Fueled by technological advances, speed has become customers’ top screening priority.
- Evaluating future risk is the main reason organisations in APAC conduct background checks.
- Conducting ID Verification in the hiring process enhances data reliability and helps combat identity fraud, and First Advantage supports it with a wide range of ID verification options tailored to regional and industry-specific needs.
- Despite the diversity of crimes and varying legal requirements, customers should continue to view criminal record results as a crucial factor in determining hireability.
- Post-employment rescreening allows employers to continually assess employee behavior and respond appropriately.
Download the full report today:
