Justin Biedinger was working at Stockton Police Department when he saw an opportunity to revolutionize the way law enforcement agencies do background checks on prospective hires. He knew nothing about designing software or even how to run a business. Biedinger took a leap of faith, and the Guardian software is now helping police departments and sheriff’s offices across the country to do more thorough background investigations in far less time. The software helps public safety agencies avoid hiring bad applicants who might show signs of implicit bias, problems with alcohol or drugs, and helps investigators catch applicant dishonesty much more easily. Guardian has brought many law enforcement agencies out of the dark age; they’re abandoning their archaic pen-and-paper processes and adopting this efficient, effective solution for better use of taxpayer dollars.
Below is Justin Biedinger’s story of how he founded Guardian Alliance Technologies.
Hiring law enforcement officers is serious business. It’s not like hiring for most types of jobs. People wearing the badge are expected to exercise sound judgment in all types of situations and some are life-or-death judgment calls. A background investigator is tasked with doing their best to predict an applicant’s future actions based on their past actions. That means they need as much information as possible about an applicant. Believe it or not, people like to hide negative information about themselves, so a police background investigation needs to be very thorough. In the past, that meant it could take several weeks, sometimes months, to complete.
I spent my entire career with the Stockton Police Department in Stockton, CA. After spending most of my career in patrol, I entered the background unit. There, I investigated hundreds of applicants. Our background unit averaged over fifteen hundred investigations a year. I was able to see first hand that the manual process was creating challenges and making it difficult to do a thorough investigation in a timely manner. I saw good applicants withdraw from the hiring process because it simply took too long to get hired.
HR Technology News: CURO Compensation Announces Pay Equity Reseller Agreement with Morneau Shepell
I remember sitting in team meetings discussing how we could do things better, and for about a year, I heard the same complaints about inefficiency and how long the process took to complete a background investigation. I thought there had to be a better way.
Even though I knew nothing about creating software, I started sketching out processes on a piece of paper. Every time I doubted myself, I shoved that piece of paper in a drawer at my desk in the background unit. But every few days, I kept pulling it out and adding to it. I knew it was time to come up with a solution to fix this problem, and thus Guardian was born.
After my own experiences and the information I gathered from my colleagues, I set out to make this process more efficient and cost saving for law enforcement agencies and for the applicants. The Guardian investigation software helps speed up the time it takes to investigate an applicant and it has streamlined the process. I feel the success comes from the fact that the software was created by a real-life background investigator and not someone who has had no real experience hiring law enforcement personnel.
HR Technology News: Decisely Adds Industry Veteran Russell Fradin To Its Board of Directors
At Guardian, we have set out to revolutionize the way a background investigator investigates an applicant with our proprietary software and the first ever National Applicant Information Center (NAIC).
I am super excited and proud that we at Guardian are improving the hiring process of our law enforcement personnel. We take this mission very seriously and are always looking out for our law enforcement family. We have partnered with some great companies, and our company is growing at our fastest rate ever as more law enforcement agencies and private investigation firms are joining the Guardian Alliance. Please visit our website and request an online demonstration of our software to learn more.
HR Technology News: Comcast Business and Palo Alto Networks Partner to Secure the Modern Workplace