What employers verify during an Employee Background Check?

In the current recruitment scenario, companies are fiercely competing with their Indian and global contemporaries to recruit the best talent. In the pursuit of better opportunities, candidates often falsify information about their employment and education to gain an edge over their contemporaries. Employers have therefore become careful and conduct a detailed background check for new employees to prevent ugly situations of negligent hiring.

Apprehensive of recent incidents, background verification has thus become one of the integral parts of verification checklist for recruiting managers in the Human Resource function. In India, background check practices are performed across different companies in no defined format. Candidates can be screened at pre-hire, pre-offer, pre-joining or post-joining levels as observed by the company. Industry experts suggests that verification requirements must be outsourced to background check companies owing to their in-depth knowledge of screening candidates. In the recent times, India has seen a significant surge of investigating agencies that perform various background checks.

However, a comprehensive background check process faces challenges too. Absence of certain information that is available in a centralized manner may require physical checks to be conducted in India. The rising incidents of fraud resume have made it extremely crucial to weed out fudged profiles during background screening process. Companies have become vigilant and developed dynamic screening policies for new hires basis their position in the organization.

Predominantly, an end-to-end background check of an employee comprises the following checks –

1. Employment verification / Reference Check – Prospective employers confirms with candidates’ past employer about specific details of employment such as tenure, salary details and personal conduct. Some companies prefer 5 years of employment history to be verified whereas others prefer last two employment histories.

2. Education verification – An important part of background screening process, education verification confirms education, training and certification claims of an applicant.

3. Address verification – It is a process to verify the address of a candidate claiming to own a certain address.

4. Criminal record verification – Potential employers obtain candidate’s permission to conduct a criminal background check of the employee to reduce legal liability for negligent hiring.

[Also read: Importance of criminal background checks]

5. Credit report check – The credit report is checked to understand sources of credit, loans, payment history and other related details that determine the credit history of an individual.

Indian organizations realize the criticality of an effective due diligence process for candidates since it can significantly help reduce workplace related issues such as theft, embezzlement, violence, injury and harassment. Such practices also help mitigate the risks of potential lawsuits as a result of negligent hiring.