In today’s economic environment, conducting an employment check on a potential candidate before you hire him/her to work in your small or large establishment is an imperative decision. Employment screening is an important hiring practice to avoid getting into corporate lawsuits, misconducts, scandals, office violence and security breaches.
Meaning and Types of Screening:
Employment screening is an investigation process on the background and credentials of an eligible employee. In India, this would mainly involve checks on the following:
- Academic records
- Past employment records
- Criminal history checks
- Personal reference checks
- Credit checks (mainly done in the financial sector)
How to Go About:
Background screening can be conducted in-house or even outsourced. Currently in India, the screening practice is gaining ground, and hence we have many world renowned screening companies setting up their branches here. These companies have their wide spread sources and public database setups to provide you with a professional, current and accurate report on the candidate.
Hence it would be advisable to work with a company you can trust in this field. Moreover, these companies provide a whole gamut of checks which you can select from depending on your requirement. This enables a customized reporting style for each company.
Verify before Hire:
Recent studies have proved that more than 40% of curriculum vitae’s have fake degrees and fraudulent credentials. Hence it becomes mandatory for the hiring company to do a thorough run through on the candidates, before investing time and money training them.
After the initial short listing, eligible candidates are asked to fill ‘Employment Verification Form’ giving detailed information about them and to attach photocopies of their certificates. The form also includes questions like ‘reason for quitting the last job’; ‘reason for employment gaps’ etc. At the end of this form the candidate’s written consent is obtained to perform the background check. Only then is the form sent to the screening agency for investigation.
