What is background check, meaning and definition?

‘Shortlisting suitable candidates out of the lot is a strenuous task. Some profiles fit best into the positions. While some appear promising, some seem suspicious. Jumping into a conclusion while choosing candidates on their face value is not a right approach as they might be misleading. A comprehensive background check of a candidate based on employment history, educational checks, and criminal records can keep your workplace safe.’

What is background check?

Background check is a process that companies conduct during the hiring process to authenticate the information provided by the candidate for right onboarding. Background verification involves multiple checks to validate past employment history, education records, employer details, identity checks, address checks, and much more. The background check usually starts as soon as the candidate clears all the rounds of the interview. 

Background check – The emerging hiring trend! 

Background check is one of the top hiring trends to stay relevant in the market and meet compliance and data security regulations. With the changing work environment and new data protection laws to prevent identity frauds, companies cannot afford even a minor discrepancy in the resume. One wrong candidate and your reputation earned over years go for a toss.

Top reasons to conduct employee background check

• To Prevent Dual Employment/Employee Moonlighting: Employee moonlighting and the concerns around it i.e. data privacy, confidentiality breaches, productivity loss, etc. came to the fore especially after Covid-19 pandemic when employees started working from home, and a majority of them adopted a hybrid model later. Moonlighting cases put ethical obligations and commitment of employees under the scanner. It is becoming common to work parallelly with multiple companies, hide side gigs and facts when examined.

Shocking moonlighting instances have made companies to have strict background checks in place to track if their candidates are involved in multiple employments and assert a degree of control with revised policies.

• To Reveal a Criminal Record: Imagine you get to know the criminal records of your employees after all the hiring process is done! Onboarding candidates with a dark criminal history behind them can pose a serious threat for your company. Moreover, you cannot risk your existing employees and work atmosphere for it. It will only compromise your workplace safety and brand equity.

AuthBridge’s industry’s largest negative and proprietary databases enables companies to conduct criminal record checks nationwide, across state, city, county, etc. to find out if there is any criminal history associated with the prospective hires.

• To Identify Fake CVs & Degrees: The rat race to grab the best role is increasing among the candidates and so are the CV frauds. Fake references, false certifications, claims, degrees and misrepresentations about employment/education are some examples. For instance, a candidate who has done a one week certification from a premier institute might boast the same in the resume without mentioning the tenure. It will be misleading for a hiring leader whether it is a one week certification and a full-time one year programme. 

Hiring employees based on falsified information can create problems for the employer as they won’t be able to perform their duties or aren’t qualified to do so. Conducting background checks can help you gather the accurate information, spot CV frauds, and establish safety at the workplace.  

• To Validate Employment History: Does the candidate actually have the work experience he/she claims to have? Sometimes to cover employment gaps, candidates misrepresent which years they have worked at previous organizations. It is very common to list more months to not showcase probationary fails or unemployed periods. Remember  – the more high-level position, the more extensive the background check process should be.
• To Protect Against Reputational Risks: No company wants to be in the spotlight for a bad reputation. Loss of revenue, damage to brand value, and regulatory penalties are serious matters for any business. All these factors eventually lead to reputational risks. Everybody should work in tandem and take the right measures from the start to mitigate reputational risks. This usually starts when the best of talent is hired for both – crucial and regular business functions.
• To Reduce Company’s Liability: Avoid unnecessary lawsuits and lower insurance costs by hiring people who get a green signal in background screening. The main reasons why organizations conduct background verification is to identify red flags in education, past employment, and criminal records of the applicants. A good hire can help you reap good profits in the future.

Candidate’s background check ensures that the applicant is suitable for hiring or not and based on that can make a final decision.

Top industries where background checks are mandatory

Due to increasing discrepancies in information in job applications, companies should run a background check on employees before onboarding them. The major employment sectors such as IT, healthcare, finance, automobile and others do mandatory background checks to filter out fraud applicants.

However, sectors like retail, restaurants and other organizations are less strict about background verification in India, mostly for entry-level positions. Irrespective of the sector, every company must have a strict background verification process in place of candidates to save time and money, avoid negligent hiring lawsuits, and detect criminal records.

How does background checks change from entry level hires to mid/senior level?

When going from entry level to senior level, the verification also goes beyond the regular background checks for in-depth investigation. From keeping tabs on social media activities to unfolding criminal records/affiliations, and much more, companies go an extra mile for leadership hiring and stay compliant to various global AML and other regulatory standards like FCPA, UK Bribery Act, Prevention of Money Laundering Act among others.

Further, it is not just seniors, but even juniors who worked under them are part of the background check interviews conducted before an individual is hired at senior level.

What is the process for background checks and how is it done?

Background check process involves various checks to validate education records, past employer details, identity checks, resume checks and address checks. At AuthBridge, we power your background verification process with real-time verification capabilities. Our AI-powered technology and proprietary database help you conduct thousands of verifications in minutes and ensure industry fastest turnaround time.

Our top USPs of background checks process

• Proprietary databases
• Domain expertise
• Customisable and integrable
• Fast and secure
• Industry specific  

How much time does it take for background checks?

There is no specific turnaround time but mostly it can range from one week to one month to carry out the process. The process varies from one employer to another, and other factors such as how much information is available of the new hires. It might take a longer time if the employer is looking for more in depth information. 

With AuthBridge, identity checks and online criminal record checks can be performed in real-time or near-real time. Other checks like Police Verification and Education verification might take some time as there is a dependency on the Government and other agencies for information.

How AuthBridge helps you automate background checks?

Our AI-enabled solutions are focused on Employment, Education, Address, Criminal & Identity checks to verify and onboard employees instantly. With the help of iBRIDGE- our one-stop candidate onboarding, the entire hiring process can be automated (employee BGV, document collection, digital document signing & seamless onboarding). Below mentioned are some of the top benefits of iBRIDGE.

• Tailor-made client-end processes to suit specific needs with quick TAT for fast decisions
• Access to largest corporate, legal, financial, negative public and proprietary databases
• One-click initiation of a new request/new candidate
• Real-time visibility of document/data collection process
• Intuitive application with relevant document collection
• Customisable alerts & notifications as per client request
• Easily integrable with any HRMS/ATS via APIs