- April 5, 2024
- Posted by: Netrika
- Category: Background Check
You interview the perfect senior management candidate for the job opening at your organization. You extend the job offer and run your standard pre-employment screening. The results are positive, and you hire the candidate, only to find unfavourable work results eventually. To prevent your organization from falling out financially, this time, you run their background check in a tailored fashion and realize the discrepancies in the employer’s past employment status against the information they claimed.
Result!
Wrong Hire. Cost Overrun. Reputational Loss. Reduction in hiring process trust. Negatively impact employee morale.
In all fairness, this colossal mistake leading to far-reaching implications could have been easily avoided by addressing some simple yet crucial mistakes in the background verification process.
What Is The Background Verification Process?
Background verification, or BGV, is synonymous with employee verification. It is ascertaining an individual’s identity and credentials for hiring, loan giving etc. First impressions are often misleading, and one must refrain from purely relying on a ‘gut feeling’.
Background verification ensures safety in the workplace. It is associated with foolproofing the screening process so that organizations can identify any false claims made by the candidate that may prove detrimental to the business or its reputation.
10 Mistakes to Avoid in the Background Verification Process
Mistake 1: Consent – Because It’s Background Check, Not Spying
One of the most common mistakes that the HR of any company is most likely to make is forgetting to ask the potential candidate their permission for employee background verification. As a hiring manager, it becomes crucial that you take written consent and make sure your candidates agree to the employee screening as part of the hiring process. If you fail to get the potential hire’s permission, you violate privacy laws, which could lead to lawsuits or fines. It could also impact your recruitment efforts as it decreases the trust between employee and employer, reflecting the company in a negative light.
Mistake 2: The “One Size Fits All” Approach
You cannot have a standard employee screening process for every hire, starting from associate to senior management. Each position in an organization carries its own set of requirements and security risks. Adopting the “one size fits all” approach is ineffective during background verification and could lead to bad hires. For instance, when hiring for a finance department, you need to prioritize criminal background and ethical code of conduct during the background verification process. However, verifying their technical certifications, adherence to cybersecurity protocols, hacking, and online presence becomes crucial when hiring an IT professional.
Mistake 3: The Automation Conundrum
As technology is shining in every vertical of industry, the hiring department is not untouched. However, the automation conundrum continues to baffle hiring managers. While relying on automation speeds up the employment screening process, enhances efficiency, and streamlines processes, it still needs the nuanced approach that comes with human judgment. Therefore, automation is better suited to the repetitive tasks and documentation part of the background check process, while human oversight is crucial for the reliability of employment screening.
Mistake 4: “Social Media Will Do the Job” Belief
In the overly connected world of social media, where a wealth of information about any person is available at the click of a hand, the platform has proved itself to be a valuable resource for hiring managers. However, what we see on social media is more than meets the eye. A wealth of information, from personal profiles to likes, dislikes, and family status, could inadvertently lead to bias during the hiring process.
Mistake 5: ‘We Can Manage on Our Own’ Viewpoint
A lot of organizations need to pay more attention to how crucial background checks are and how much valuable information they can provide you, preventing you from making a costly hiring mistake. This “we can manage on our own” viewpoint in the complex landscape of the background verification process leads to financial and reputation loss to the company, while putting its employees at a security risk. Hiring a background verification company to take on the challenge and leverage their years of expertise in helping you make wise hiring decisions will filter irrelevant data, eliminate hiring errors, and stay up-to-date with compliance regulations.
Mistake 6: You Don’t Let the Candidates Explain
During the background check process, the potential hire’s application could reflect several discrepancies. These could include a previous criminal record, a tainted professional career, a rough patch, or a career gap. However, not giving potential hires a chance to explain themselves and stating a direct no is not always a suggestive response. Those discrepancies could be a result of past challenges that the potential hire might have overcome, and your chance to explain yourself may push them in the right direction of improvement and professional growth.
Mistake 7: Neglecting International Background Checks
We live in an interconnected world where hiring is no longer localized but is done on a global platform. This requires the hiring managers to perform internal background verification on the potential hire to bring to light any red flags, discrepancies, criminal records, or regulatory violations in another country.
Mistake 8: Skipping Drug and Substance Abuse Testing
While it may seem irrelevant to some organizations, overlooking the elements of drug and substance abuse could affect the company’s culture, increase safety issues, and impair employee performance. Drug and substance abuse should be a part of the background verification checklist, as it demonstrates the organization encourages workplace safety, high employee morale, and company reputation as a priority.
Mistake 9: Failing to Verify Professional Licenses and Certifications
Potential hires are likely to present incorrect data on their professional certification and licenses, which may expose the company to regulatory and safety risks while degrading professional competency and operational efficiency. For instance, if an IT hire lies about their cybersecurity certifications, it can expose the company to sensitive data vulnerabilities, leading to costly risk management, compliance issues, legal fees, and loss of customer as well as stakeholder trust, thus causing major reputation loss.
Mistake 10: Disregarding Continuous Monitoring and Re-screening
One of the most common mistakes hiring managers tend to make is conducting a one-time employment pre-screening process but failing to perform continuous monitoring or re-screening. Continuous monitoring is crucial to uncover legal or disciplinary issues that may arise after the employee has been hired.
Netrika Consulting: Your Partner in Making an Informed Hiring Decision
Netrika Consulting is one of the best background verification companies in India, and it focuses on improving the employment screening process to make it successful, simplified, and efficient. We are aware of the difficult hiring process for professionals, ranging from trainees to executives in C-suits, and we have experience conducting background checks on them. To guarantee that your company hires workers with a spotless record who will work together to expand your company, our industry experts leverage their wealth of skills and knowledge for a proactive approach to background checks.