The background screening industry is at an inflection point. While operational efficiency and turnaround time remain table stakes for HR leaders, these incremental gains are no longer enough to drive true differentiation. As the job market and the way people work continue to evolve, companies in the background screening space find themselves in a cycle of internal competition, chasing the same clients with marginal improvements in cost or speed. But sustainable growth won’t come from winning a zero-sum game. It will come from redefining how value is created and delivered across the ecosystem.

The Plateau Pattern

When an industry plateaus, the symptoms are clear. Competition turns inward. The same providers pitch the same clients with fractional differences in price or turnaround time. Innovation slows because protecting the status quo feels safer than pursuing transformation.

This pattern isn’t unique to background screening. B2B software companies faced it when cloud adoption matured. Telecom providers hit it when mobile penetration peaked. The companies that reignited growth didn’t optimize existing playbooks. They redefined what value meant to their customers.

Four Strategies to Break Through

Widen the Lens

The first step is expanding how we understand the part background screening plays within clients’ ecosystems. Background screening has traditionally positioned itself as a compliance checkpoint, a necessary process to minimize hiring risk. But forward-thinking organizations are reframing their purpose entirely.

Instead of being “the leading background screening company,” what if the goal became “connecting businesses to verifiable people data”? This shift isn’t semantic. It opens new avenues for value creation. Companies don’t just need to know if a candidate passed a check. They need ongoing visibility into workforce risk, seamless integration with their existing systems, and intelligence that helps them make better decisions about talent management over time.

Widening the lens means asking: What problems exist beyond the initial hire? How can screening data inform retention strategies, compliance audits, and workforce planning?

Move From Output to Experience

Too often, screening is perceived as a commoditized necessity, something to be tolerated rather than valued. This perception exists because the industry has optimized for outputs (faster reports, cheaper checks) rather than experiences (intuitive workflows, transparent communication, meaningful insights).

There’s a difference between delivering a background report and delivering peace of mind. The former is transactional. The latter requires understanding how HR teams actually work: their pain points, their competing priorities, their need to justify decisions to leadership.

HR professionals cite the same key needs: platforms that are easy to use, reports that answer questions and provide deeper insights, and partners who understand the urgency of filling critical roles. When screening providers prioritize experience, these pain points become opportunities for genuine partnership.

Identify Innovative Partnerships and Packaging

Expansion often emerges from adjacent opportunities. Telecom providers bundled services. Software companies created marketplaces. Banks embedded their services into non-financial platforms. Each found ways to deliver value through creative partnerships that expanded their addressable market.

The challenge with continuous monitoring isn’t technical capability. It’s helping organizations manage the implications. The companies that succeed won’t just provide monitoring technology; they’ll provide decision frameworks, automated workflows, and support systems that make continuous monitoring actionable rather than overwhelming. As an HR leader, you should expect your screening partner to help you think through policy implications, notification protocols, and how to balance compliance requirements with employee privacy and fairness.

Embrace Transparent Measurement

One of the most significant barriers to industry growth is the lack of transparency and benchmarking data. Unlike sectors such as media or software, where companies share performance metrics and industry benchmarks, screening operates in relative opacity.

Transparent measurement starts internally. What are the actual metrics for customer satisfaction, not just turnaround time? How do you measure the business impact you create for clients? Companies that can articulate their value in client outcomes (reduced time-to-hire, improved quality of hire, minimized compliance risk) create differentiation that transcends price and speed.

According to Pew Research, 34% of Americans struggle to trust people around them. As an industry built on creating trust-filled environments, we should model the transparency we help companies achieve.

Catch more HRTech Insights: HRTech Interview with Muni Boga, Co-founder and CEO at Kudos

A Framework for Transformation

Breaking through a plateau requires more than good intentions. It demands a structured approach.

Transformation begins with an unfiltered audit of how services are actually used. Sit in on their workflows. Listen to their complaints, not just their compliments. Where do they find workarounds because the solution doesn’t quite fit? Where do they supplement the service with other tools? These gaps represent both your current limitations and your future opportunities. The value you provide today may not be the value they need tomorrow.

Reframe your purpose from product-centric to problem-centric language. Your purpose isn’t to deliver background checks; it’s to help organizations build trust and mitigate risk throughout the employment lifecycle. Test new service models with willing clients, and define success metrics that reflect client outcomes, not just operational efficiency.

The Path Forward

The screening industry isn’t destined to remain at a plateau. Companies that embrace this inflection point will find growth not by competing harder for the same business, but by expanding what business means. They’ll build platforms that feel intuitive rather than transactional. They’ll package services that solve emerging problems, not just fulfill compliance requirements.

The question isn’t whether growth is possible. It’s whether leaders are ready to pursue it by changing not just what they do, but how they think about why they do it. The organizations that answer yes, that are willing to shake up their own belief systems and reframe their value proposition, will be the ones that define the industry’s next chapter.