How do you avoid hiring applicants who can tamper with the ethics of your organization? It is important to disregard applications that can harm your reputation during the initial steps of the hiring process.
That is why you need to understand when an applicant is being completely honest while presenting information on their resume and when they are not?
This is where a successful resume verification can help. It helps you weed out dishonest applicants and identify:
- Fraudulent degrees
- Graduation dates
- Incorrect employer details
- Inflated salary histories
- False job titles
- Actual job duration
- Titles held
- Job duties
- Reason for termination
- Rehiring eligibility
Spotting the above-listed points can help you make informed hiring decisions. It also helps you select the best possible staff for your organization as it helps you find inconsistencies like dates of employment, salary, job titles or responsibilities, etc.
Given below are the 4 stages of resume verification which will help you conduct an efficient resume verification of candidates. Along with the four stages, an additional step is to help companies conduct these verifications digitally as due to the novel Coronavirus pandemic they are subjected to work remotely.
Verifying employee details
One factor that might help you identify false information is the quality of the information being provided by the candidate in both the applicant release form and employment verification form (usually included on a job application or background screening questionnaire).
A key factor that will help you in acquiring the information needed to conduct efficient resume verification is by asking the candidates to be thorough while providing information.
Applicants must fill out the employment verification form meticulously. Find below the information you need to ask the candidate in an employment verification form.
- Employer name
- Employer location
- Employer phone number or website
- Dates of employment: This will help you understand the frequency of job switches and how long the employee sticks to one job
- Starting and ending job title and responsibilities associated with it
- Start and end Salary
- Reasons for leaving
Another vital piece of information that gets commonly overlooked is whether candidates were working directly for the organization they claim they were employed at or were they employed through a temp agency or contractor. Having this information can advance the resume verification process by resolving any inconsistencies.
Education details
The process of resume verification does not end with employment verification. It is very common for applicants to furnish false education details too. Hence, education verification is a vital stage in resume verification that you can’t afford to miss.
Most of the time you will find this information listed under the Education section of a resume in reverse chronological order.
Through education verification process, you will be able to get accurate information regarding:
- The degree the applicant claims they have earned
- The types of programs they claim to have attended
- If the certificates are from a fake university: Diploma Mills are a plague in the digitized world. Watch out for certificates obtained through these sites posing as institutions to sell fake degrees and certificates for a fee. You can identify these as degrees by paying attention to the following:
- Degrees from these sites will solely be based on the candidate’s life and work experiences
- The school’s name will sound similar to an actual school name
- The listed institution will not be accredited
- The institution will list no address or location
- Forged percentage of marks
Criminal background check
Another stage of resume verification is criminal verification. If the applicant has any criminal records, they will most likely withhold this information.
If the candidate comes clean about his/her criminal history, it attests to the candidate’s commitment to honesty – a quality that is seen as a positive attribute in any employee.
Thus, screening a candidate’s criminal history helps gauge a candidate’s honesty. Most importantly, it will help you make the final call on the candidate’s suitability for the given job position.
Credibility of references
Credible references can provide employers with valuable information. The recruiter can get insights into the candidate’s employment background, work ethic, competence, character, personality, and integrity.
If a given candidate is backed by a good number of positive referrals, it means that he/she is more likely to have a good working relationship with people in their previous work as compared to someone who doesn’t. This also shows that a given candidate is potentially a team player who gets along with people – an attribute that is seen positively by most recruiters as you do not want someone in your team (or your company) who does not take teamwork in good stride.
Verifying details remotely
During remote work, there are certain aspects of the onboarding process that may go unchecked. But as an employer, you need to maintain the integrity of your company without jeopardizing its values.
There are ways you can have these verifications conducted remotely. Learn to read how:
- Employment verification: You can gather more information about the employment records of the candidate from LinkedIn. It is highly likely that you will find a page on Linkedin for the company your employee was associated with. You can reach out to the HR professionals or any senior management professional, to check if there are any inaccuracies with the employment records.
- Education verification: Check this list of online universities that have been discredited or have been declared as spammed, while going through the candidates’ resume, go through the list to see if the name of the institution they have mentioned in their resume is credible. You can also use remote background check services to make sure that the details provided by the candidate are correct.
- Criminal verification: Criminal verification requires you to adhere to your local area jurisdiction with respect to what you can and cannot do during the background check process. You may seek the advice of a legal counsel online or purchase background check services.
- Referral verification: Do not ask for references, ask for LinkedIn recommendations. When applicants have recommendations from their mentors or employers on LinkedIn, it is definitely more credible as you can check the profile details of the referee and make a conclusive decision about the legitimacy of the reference details.
Utilizing the above tips correctly, you can acquire key talent and eliminate any scope of error during the onboarding process. Further, you can also conduct the verification process digitally without sacrificing the integrity of your organization.
