Hiring Experienced Candidates? Get it Right with these BGV Checks

To begin with, let’s look at some hard facts – the rate of unemployment is at an all-time high. 85% of job applicants share false information in their CVs. The chances of recruiters getting induced with the misrepresented information while interviewing experienced candidates are one in every six hiring. That’s an alarming number. 

Whether hiring freshers or experienced candidates, there’s just one solution to do hiring right – background check. Earlier, we’ve discussed the basics of background verification and the kinds of checks that recruiters must conduct. In this blog, we’ll discuss how to get background verification right for experienced candidates.

But first, what do background verification companies do?

Many companies make the mistake of thinking that they can perform checks on candidates in-house. But can they match the expertise of background verification companies? Professional background check companies look for information and details that recruiters might have missed out or not considered important. Below are just some such details that background check companies look for.

• Experience gap 
• Discrepancy in education background information
• Work experience spanning unrelated industries
• Varying skill sets
• Unrecognized names of institutions and organizations
• Certificate courses presented as higher education

Now let’s look at some of the key checks that companies must consider before hiring experienced candidates. Here, we’ve divided the checks based on their benefits to organizations.

To ensure safety of their workforce

Criminal background check

It is one of the most important background checks.  A candidate with a past record of money laundering, theft and cybercrime is best avoided. Small wrongdoings such as legal misconduct and law-breaking tell a lot about an individual’s character and the chances of them repeating such behaviour. A candidate’s involvement in serious crimes such as murder or kidnapping can pose serious safety issues to the workforce, clients and other stakeholders. Criminal background check is a must to ensure workplace safety.

License discrepancies

Many professions require correct licenses from authorities. At times, licenses have to be renewed. Wrongdoings can lead to the cancellation of licenses. When recruiting for such profiles, it is vital to do a thorough check on the licenses: the date of issue and expiration, the duration of the license, the authority that has issued the license, the location and other such details. License checks can ensure that the organization does not suffer any discontinuation or legal issues in future.

Legal and lawsuit check

This is an important employee background check and one that should be conducted carefully. There could be different kinds of lawsuits that an individual could be involved in – personal matters, property and family matters, professional matters or even a small road accident could have led to a lawsuit. Hence, it is essential to check the nature and details of the lawsuit as all legal issues may not affect an individual’s professional performance.

Address check

An individual not disclosing the correct address details should raise a red flag. If a person tries to hide their address, there has to be something fishy. Conducting a proper address check is a critical part of background screening as it can ensure the hiring organization about the person’s credibility and trustworthiness.

Personal background checks

While a lot of HR teams conduct checks on candidates’ social media accounts, at times they may be misleading. It is essential to find out if a candidate was ever involved in incidents or cases that lean towards racism, inequality, casteism, religious discrimination or sexual misconduct.  

To ensure productivity and performance

Education checks

One of the most mis-presented aspects on CVs is education details. To land good jobs, candidates often share incorrect details. They might give incorrect information about the university, their score, or the courses completed. They might present their certificates in place of the marksheet or may mention a course as a degree. These are key details that should be thoroughly scrutinized before hiring candidates in the pre employment screening. 

Reference checks with ex employer

One of the most reliable ways to hire good candidates is to conduct employment checks and reference checks with their past employers. Information about the candidates’ personal and professional conduct can be easily gathered with the help of reference checks. These checks can also be used to cross check the authenticity of the information regarding professional achievements shared by a candidate. Other details about the candidates’ work history – duration of work, job profile in each company, pay, and professional conduct – can be easily gathered with the help of reference checks.

To sum it up

With the rise in cases of employee fraud, most organizations, whether large corporations or start-ups or institutions, hire third-party professional background verification agencies to run the checks mentioned above. The HR teams that understand the importance of background checks for hiring experienced candidates is more critical.