The hiring process always goes through some kind of vetting process. Hardly anyone hires an employee, even a temporary worker, without at least requiring some basic background information. After all, if someone has been a problem in another workplace, there’s a probability he or she could have similar issues in a new job. And employers generally don’t want to lose time and money on issues that can be prevented or avoided in the first place. However, with the modern digital world, the ability to vet a new hire has gone to a new level, and just in time too.
The Process of Employment Verification
Verifying the viability of a potential hire goes well beyond the basic identification information and history provided in a job application. Today, the need for understanding whom one is hiring, whether they fit into your organizational culture, and how that person will add to your company’s growth matter tremendously. However, performing a full background search on every possible candidate, or even the short-listed ones, takes a tremendous amount of time.
Digital tools are very much available to speed up the process, but many HR offices are simply not equipped or trained to take advantage of them. Instead, typical HR procedures focus on submitted forms and paper versus proactively looking for information on candidates. No surprise, responsive vetting often misses more issues than proactive verification.
What a Company Can Gain from Quality Employment Verifications
The benefits of a quality hire are both immediate and long-term. The immediate side of the picture is the validation of a high-quality employee candidate who can really fill a vacancy well and perform the duties of the job at hand. It’s in a company’s best interest to hire employees who are a good fit and have a suitable background for the job because the hiring process can be expensive and time consuming.
If you miss the mark with a hire because you did not perform the important employment verification step, it could lead to more time and money you need to spend down the road for a new hire.
Long-term, modern employment verification confirms that all the details about a candidate check out, not just the favorable ones that the candidate wants to be seen. Second, instead of taking the candidate’s word on the matter, his or her skills are actually confirmed and even tested proactively. Finally, the process also helps eliminate candidates coming in the door with intentionally false or inflated credentials, a common problem in competitive hiring situations.
Going Beyond the Reactive View
Again, the advantage of quality employment verification takes a proactive approach. That includes a variety of tools that are both simple as well as complex. The traditional tools that include accessible information that helps provide a bigger picture about a candidate include credit history checks, search engine information, phone number, and reference checks, and public records checks.
On the non-traditional side of things, additional data can also be gathered through social media mining about the individual, financial activity reporting, background checks, employment records, academic record confirmation, and more.
Information Can Be Powerful But Risky Requiring Care
Compliance and regulations also create minefields for the company. While additional information via an employers check makes it far easier to avoid risks in hiring, understanding how that information can be used or not is also just as important.
Companies still have to be cognizant of privacy laws, what is collected in the hiring process to be kept protected and confidential, and employers cannot share the information within networks proactive to “blacklist” a candidate from the industry in general.
As a result, having access to qualified expertise on how to find candidate information as well as how to use it legally and effectively is essential to maintain a successful vetting process that doesn’t get discredited.
The bottom line, employers cannot rely on submitted information from candidates nor should they. Savvy companies are checking out their shortlisted possibilities before ever meeting with the recruits and avoiding potential pitfalls through active searching and validation.
Companies that don’t adjust accordingly won’t fall apart, but they do end up spending valuable time and money on candidates that become preventable headaches. And in a highly efficient work world, headaches can’t be tolerated for long.
