thredUP, the largest online consignment and thrift store, is growing while also expanding its business by opening retail stores in California, creating a private label clothing line and launching a Goody Box service. As thredUP has grown quickly, they realized that in order to build a reputation as a great employer and attract great job candidates, they needed more control of their hiring and background screening process. And, in order to centralize and streamline their hiring, provide a great candidate experience, and decrease the turnaround time to hire, they also needed a solution that would integrate with their existing ATS. Find out why thredUP chose to upgrade to GoodHire to meet their need to scale.

As thredUP’s popularity grows online, and as the company begins to expand into local retail markets, hiring for its five distribution centers has increased significantly. For thredUP, it’s not just about a great online experience and a pleasing selection of goods, the company values its employees and places a high priority on making thredUP a great place to work with opportunities for career growth. However, employee turnover in this sector is high—job candidates often apply to multiple jobs simultaneously, and if a background check slows the hiring process, thredUP loses a potential great employee to another job opportunity.

As the startup grew, the team decided it was time to move away from its indirect hiring process (temp-to-hire through a staffing agency) to a direct-hire model at some locations, with complete ownership of background checks. The company was looking for:

At the time, their staffing agency used a large employment screening provider for its background checks, and turnaround times for results would sometimes take 3-4 weeks. “With the other provider, for some reason, it was very confusing for a candidate to go through the screening process. The platform wasn’t optimized for candidates to use on their mobile devices, and we were constantly having to follow-up with candidates to remind them to fill out their background check authorization. The background check emails often got sent to their spam folders, which added to the delay.” said Holly Stevenson, People Operations Manager at thredUP.

The company needed to hire hourly employees for three shifts at five distribution centers, as well as four retail stores, and needed to get them onboarded quickly, but poor user experience, delayed results, and inefficient workflows prohibited thredUP from speeding up their hiring process. These challenges prompted thredUP to look for a new background check solution where they could have more control for their increased on-site hiring needs—so they turned to GoodHire.

thredUP began using GoodHire at one of its distribution centers to assess their new direct-hire model, and were pleased by much faster turnaround times and increased control of the process. After the initial rollout of GoodHire at one location, the company expanded its centralized model of owning the background check process by integrating GoodHire with Lever, its applicant tracking system (ATS).

Upon implementation, the GoodHire team worked closely with thredUP to ensure their high-volume hiring needs were met, and making sure the integration with Lever worked seamlessly. GoodHire’s customer success team was also instrumental in getting some of the kinks out of the bulk upload process so that thredUP could start screens for multiple candidates at once—a big time saver.

“All of the background checks are initiated through me, so recruiters at each location send me the names of candidates they want to send an offer to, and we’ll send an offer contingent on passing a seven-year criminal background check. As soon as the results come back from GoodHire, we review the results and make the determination from there,” said Holly.

While Holly starts the checks on her end, all of the HR managers and recruiters at each location are able to login to the GoodHire dashboard to get instant insight into the status of each candidate’s background check and estimated delivery times for results, as well as current employees’ background check results, which are stored in GoodHire’s secure servers.

“Our high-volume recruiting happens from California to Pennsylvania, all of our recruiters are on a different schedule, and everyone’s interviewing at different times. GoodHire has really allowed us to consistently be running background checks pretty much as quickly as we get the information and get a thumbs up from our supervisor. There’s not a delay,” said Holly. “The fact that we have ownership of that, and there’s not a certain number of checks that we can run a day, we can do as many bulk uploads as we need to—and not having a limit, or not having too many errors in the process, and having estimated times for results to be returned, has been great.”

By partnering with GoodHire, thredUP has been able to quickly expand their distributed hiring and screening operations. The faster turnaround times—in some cases, within a few hours, but typically within 3-7 days—mean that they can often get new hires started within one week, which makes a big difference when competing for in-demand workers, some of whom are considering other jobs that do not require a background screen. This has enabled thredUP to compete in the marketplace by keeping candidates interested and engaged once they’ve completed the initial on-site interview.

GoodHire has also helped thredUP streamline the candidate communications process thanks to its built-in support for alerting and communicating with candidates. When candidates receive their offer letter from Lever, thredUP’s recruiting team sends the background check authorization link from GoodHire.

For thredUP’s job candidates, GoodHire’s mobile-optimized workflow and e-consent simplifies the screening process and helps candidates complete faster. Plus, with GoodHire, candidates have increased visibility into the background check process, too, and know exactly what to expect as they move through the workflow.

“We have a very low percentage of people who need a reminder to fill out their GoodHire information, which has made a big difference, especially for me. That’s something I used to have to follow-up with manually, which delayed the hiring process a lot more,” added Holly. thredUp also appreciates GoodHire’s customer support team, and Holly notes that she like that the US-based team is available from 8am-8pm ET to help with any questions she might have, or roadblocks that candidates might encounter.

thredUP expanded its use of GoodHire by implementing a new pre-employment screening process for candidates applying to corporate positions. “Once we started owning the background check piece, we decided to run background checks for all new hires across the board. For salaried new hires, we also do an education verification through GoodHire, which has been very interesting and helpful on the corporate side,” said Holly. “Education verification was not something we had been doing before. It’s definitely come to our attention—and I know this is a stat across the board for HR—but education is one of the top things that people lie about on their resumes.”

thredUP’s distribution center team members are the backbone of its operations—employees receive, process, and ship the clothing and accessories sold online, and timely, efficient hiring at these centers is critical to their growing expansion plans both online and through their new retail stores.

“We have a really strong teamwork mentality. We offer equity to all of our hourly employees and that makes us a little bit different than your typical warehouse job, and plays a big part in making us successful—employees are more engaged and dedicated if they know they have a little piece of the pie there. That’s something we’re proud of, and building up this strong hourly workforce, having a reputation as a great employer, gets people excited about what we’re doing and want to join us,” said Holly.

The company’s new direct-hire model and integrated background check workflow has enabled them to streamline the hiring process and improve the speed at which they are able to make offers to candidates and onboard new employees. With GoodHire as their background screening provider, thredUP has a faster, reliable screening process that will enable them to support their ongoing growth and expansion plans.