CheckPlease Blog

  It's been a long time coming, but the Ministry of Justice has finally moved online today for anyone wanting their own criminal record. The bad old days of printing out and signing and then scanning paper forms, and then waiting for 20 business days or more are over. Now you can get your own criminal record directly from the Ministry of Justice . It's fast (3 working days) and it's free. We were keen to try out the new process, and see how it works, so here goes. It's fast and it's free - but it's of limited use. These are the big points. You can get your own criminal record in 3 days instead of 20, and you don't need to pay a thing. The downside is that the result is of limited use to you, because the result is not cryptographically signed, and there is no secure way for you to share it. It's all very well checking out your own criminal record, but instead it's often a potential employer like an Uber who wants to see your record. Of course you can

By now you may be aware that on May 3, the Ministry of Justice is shutting down their free third party criminal record check service. If your organisation does lots of criminal record checks, this may be quite a big deal for you, as third party checks from the MoJ will now cost $11 each. If you do hundreds or thousands of free checks a year, that's many thousands of dollars per year that you'll need to find. Even if you currently use the cheapest available priority service - the bronze 15 day check at $8.50 - you're still going to end up in the red. When money is tight, it can be tempting to look for short cuts. So what are your options? What about switching to self-checks? One tempting idea might be to get the candidate to do their own check, and then email you the result. In the past this wasn't a very tempting option, as self checks were slow, just like free third party checks. There was no advantage in trying to use self-checks over third party checks - both were fr

This May 3 sees the biggest changes to the NZ criminal record checking system in many years. Today I'd like to cover what to me is the most surprising of these changes and one that will affect many employers.  All checks are now fast, taking just 3 working days. Yes, you read that right - all self-checks and third party checks now take 3 days. The MoJ have done away with all priorities, including the standard 20 working day turnaround for free checks, and the 3, 10 and 15 day turnarounds for CCH (priority) checks. Effectively all checks are now gold. This dramatic speedup will have many NZ organisations rethinking their recruitment processes. Many companies today are used to dealing with slow results, and so they'll start new employees long before they have their criminal record. The company will typically protect themselves by asking the candidate about their criminal record on their application form. The new employee then commences their new job with a clause like "we ca

  This May 3 sees the biggest changes to the NZ criminal record checking system in many years. As well as introducing a new online portal, the Ministry has made a number of changes to its business model. I'd like to share my thoughts on the impact of all of this on your background checking processes. Without further ado, let's look at change #1, and it's a big one. The MoJ's free third party service has reached the end of the road. From May 3, there is no longer any safe way to get a candidate's criminal record without paying . For many organisations doing high volumes of free checks, this is a big deal. Currently, you and your candidate can complete the standard third party form , which you then post to the Ministry. After 20 working days or so, you would get back the candidate's report. All free. Obviously there were several problems with this model. For one, 20 working days is a long time. To deal with this, many companies today add the "we can terminate