The responsibility of any employer lies not only in hiring employees from impeccable references or incredible resumes but also in assuring that the right person is hired. Therefore, Employee Background Verification becomes important. Employee Screening Benchmark Report of 2017 by HireRight shows that 85% of respondents in that survey find out misrepresentation or lie in job applications or resumes of candidates during the screening process. As hiring wrong candidates for specific job roles appears to be useful for the organization, the hiring authority needs to be very cautious.
Employee Background Verification and Screening: Myths and Reality
Myths: Background Verification on all new hires are not done most of the time on the part of employers.
Reality: Most of the employers take the responsibility of background check before hiring a new employee for a particular post. The 2016 CareerBuilder survey indicates that 75% of employers have opined that they hired wrong persons as there were lacunas in the background verification process. Since then, the majority of employers conduct thorough background checks while they are going to hire new employees for their organizations.
Myths: Background verification companies take two to three weeks for checking employees’ backgrounds.
Reality: The time needed for background verification depends on various factors. Record length, record location, the extensiveness of search, federal and local laws- all indicate how much a time a background verification company requires to get essential information. The time also depends on the company’s experience on background checks.
Myths: Organizations are mainly concerned about checking new hires’ criminal records.
Reality: Checking criminal records of new hires turn out to be a significant aspect of hiring new employees. However, checking criminal history never happens to be the only reason behind running a background check. Besides, screening criminal background, identity check, education check, credit check, and checking of licensing are also done on the part of the employer to ensure that they are hiring candidates after a complete background check. As it appears to be problematic to provide employment to candidates with previous minor or significant criminal records, the majority of the employers run background checks to find out criminal records before hiring candidates for a particular job role.
Myths: Educational qualification checking is not considered to be as important as criminal record verification.
Reality: Verifying educational qualifications appears to be equally significant besides checking criminal records. As educational qualification varies with job roles, employers require to check whether the candidates are at all eligible for the job roles. Misrepresentations have been found on resumes regarding their educational qualifications as per 2017 reports of HireRight. Therefore, background verification of educational qualifications needs to be run by employers. The majority of employers have taken into consideration the matter of academic qualification verification for new hires so that any misrepresentation is thoroughly verified.
