Built-in background checks

An ATS with built in background checks means you order the report from the candidate you are already looking at — not from a second login you remember after the offer call. For most teams, the gap is not "we forgot checks exist." It is that checks live in another vendor, so they happen late, twice, or not at all.

If you hire registered nurses, credentialing is not optional theater. You still should not bounce between the ATS, Checkr, and a shared inbox to ask whether the criminal search came back.

The problem this solves

Add-on background check tools create a handoff. Recruiter copies the candidate's name into Checkr. Someone else owns the results. The ATS still shows "Offer" with no record of the report. If the hire falls through, the next recruiter repeats the work.

Aptimal connects Checkr so the order starts on the applicant profile. Employment and education verification, state criminal search, and federal criminal search are the packages the product is built around. The report stays attached to the person in your pipeline.

Aptimal is not a consumer reporting agency. Checkr is. That distinction matters for FCRA. You still owe disclosure, authorization, and adverse-action process. Having the button in the ATS does not make those steps go away. It does stop the "we will run it later" leak.

How built-in background checks work in Aptimal

1. Connect Checkr from Integrations. You need a Checkr account. Aptimal does not invent one for you.
2. Set a US state on the job. Packages are state-aware; the UI will block the order if the state is missing.
3. Open the candidate on the Kanban board and order the Checkr package from the applicant profile.
4. The candidate completes Checkr's invitation flow.
5. When the report is in, you view it from the same profile instead of hunting an email.

If a check fails to complete, you can retry from the same place. This is not a bulk "run everyone" blast on day one of applications. You order when the candidate is far enough along that the cost and the candidate experience make sense — typically around offer, sometimes earlier for roles with hard credentialing.

What this looks like for a registered nurse req

You are hiring an RN. Knockouts already asked for a current license. The assessment asked about a specific EHR and a night-shift escalation. You are ready to offer.

From the candidate record you order employment verification, education verification, and the criminal searches your Checkr account allows for that state. The nurse completes the invite. You do not paste their SSN into a second website. When the report returns, it is on the profile next to the scores you already used to decide they were worth an offer.

If you staff traveling clinicians across states, the job's state field is not a formality. Set it correctly or you will be in the error message instead of the report.

What it replaces

Old step	What usually happens	What Aptimal replaces it with
Separate Checkr login	Results live in another tab	Order and view from the applicant
Recruiter copy-paste of PII	Slow, easy to mismatch people	Checkr invitation from the profile
"We'll run it after they sign"	Offer accepted, check fails, chaos	Check attached to the pipeline stage you choose
Shared inbox for reports	Nobody owns follow-up	Report on the candidate card
Spreadsheet of "clear / not clear"	Stale and not an official report	Checkr report as the artifact

Healthcare, trucking, and finance teams feel this more than a five-person startup hiring one marketer. The product still works for the marketer. The ROI is higher when a bad skip is expensive.

Which plan it is on

Checkr background checks start on Hiring Pros at $129/mo (5 seats, up to 20 active jobs). They are not included on Small Businesses at $65/mo. Pipeline Power at $399/mo includes them as well. Checkr's own per-report fees still apply through Checkr; Aptimal does not turn those into a surprise "unlimited checks" claim.

See Aptimal pricing. Connect Checkr from Integrations after you are on a plan that includes it.

For how Aptimal treats AI versus human decisions, and a short note on FCRA roles, read AI & hiring compliance. That page is the sales-support version. This page is the "where is the button" version.