It’s a ritual we’ve seen come out of Hollywood or undergone ourselves: passing a drug test as the final condition of getting a job. While not a requirement for every position, many employers do insist on a drug test, even as a mere formality, if only to cover all their bases. But what drug test is most popular for pre-employment? Here are some of the most common methods.

5-Panel Urinalysis

Perhaps the drug test we best recognize as a precondition of employment is the five-panel urine test. This is the most common pre-employment test in both the public and private sectors. Usually a simple and discreet procedure, it requires prospective employees to submit a urine sample of between 30 to 45 milliliters (mL). The five-panel test will screen for the presence of opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamine, and phencyclidine. A urine test can detect drug and metabolites of these drugs in a sample, but only within a relatively brief period—between 1 to 3 days for most drugs. Marijuana will show in a urine test much longer depending on how heavy the usage is and also how quickly a person metabolizes things. While a cottage industry has sprung up around foiling urine tests with fake fluids, the testing industry has responded in kind, whether by increasing oversight at test sites or by detecting phony urine at the lab, leading to an automatic failure of the test.

Saliva Testing

An increasingly popular means of testing new hires before the ink is dry on the contract is by administering oral fluid drug tests. Less intrusive than providing a urine sample for many people, a saliva test requires one to swab the inside of a subject’s mouth and submit the swab to the lab. Given how many people eagerly submit their own saliva samples to participate in genealogy reports, there is rarely an objection to this test. While it is much less intrusive, it is also less effective, with a shorter detection window than a urine test. For instance, a saliva test may only be able to detect THC within the last 48 hours.

Hair Testing

When employers insist upon ensuring that their new employees have as pristine a record of drug abstinence as possible, they will go for the most comprehensive and foolproof testing mechanism available. A 10-panel hair follicle drug test screens for an expanded range of illegal and commonly abused drugs and offers a testing period of at least 90 days, elucidating habitual drug use while other modalities of testing allow people to clean up long enough to beat the test. This drug test is most popular for pre-employment in industries involving heavy machinery, where drug abuse is unacceptable. A hair test requires subjects to cut and submit a sample of head or body hair, which the lab will then screen for, detecting metabolites across the following ten panels:

• Amphetamines
• Barbiturates
• Benzodiazepines
• Cannabis
• Cocaine
• Methadone
• Methaqualone
• Opioids
• Phencyclidine (PCP)
• Propoxyphene

When hair is not available, a nail test can serve the same function, and for even more thorough testing, 17-panel tests are available as well.