3 Benefits of Self-Verification

3 Benefits of Self-Verification

Background screening is the conventional way of validating educational information furnished by a candidate. There have been cases where an employee has lost a job opportunity because of an inaccurate employee background check even when his background antecedents are, in reality, correct. This is mainly attributed to the fact that the previous organization, or the educational institution gives out misleading or incorrect information which makes the verification go awry. With self-education verification, one can make sure that all the educational details about the person are recorded correctly by the source.

 

What is “Self-Education Verification” or “Self Verification”?

The process of getting one’s own educational documents verified through a third party background verification agency is known as ‘self-education verification’ or self verification. Getting one’s own education documents verified speaks for all the efforts a person puts into attaining those degrees and diplomas. There are couple of benefits of getting self-education verified which each one of us should consider.

1) Command over Career Data- Human errors can occur anywhere, including records. Anybody can make a mistake in recording your particulars in their records, be it your previous employer or one of the educational institutions you studied in. Since it has now become an industry norm to get employee background check done on the new-hires, it is always better to be proactive about it. With a verification conducted on yourself, you will become aware of what information will go in the background verification report when your employer decides to screen you.

2) Display of positive personality traits- Going to an interview equipped with a self-education verification report can be looked at quite impressively by the interviewers. Your readiness to share your details with the ones hiring you shows them that you are providing them with true information. Also, the verification of facts being provided by you is taken on face value.

3) Stand out among other candidates- Getting self-education verification done provides a candidate with a specialised report. A self-verified candidate always has an edge over the other job applicants who are not self-verified. It would be appreciated by the company if the person saves the company’s cost to an extent by sharing his verification report with the employer. After all, a proactive and honest approach is always welcomed by any employer.

Thus, taking the prudent step of self-education verification a candidate can be reassured about the future of his or her career.

Hire in haste, repent at leisure

Hire in haste, repent at leisure

The arrest of an impersonator who used stolen documents to land jobs in well-known companies just exposes how lightly we take Employee verification. What makes this point even more glaring in this case is that the imposter was known in his neighbourhood by his real identity but his organizations had no clue that he was parading as a different person. If only the organizations had undertaken thorough background verification they wouldn’t have been caught napping, thus exposing themselves to a great risk. A fraudster in an organization is like a bomb ticking to go off. An unscrupulous employee can resort to forgery, financial impropriety, steal data and/or commit other criminal activities.

When large projects come knocking, human resource business partners typically tend to hire in haste to fill job vacancies with competency matching candidates, without rigorous scrutiny of their documents. This is especially true for the Information Technology sector where data shows that a large pool of job aspirants fake their qualification documents. Again, for lower functional positions, companies often dispense with background checks, leading to numerous accounts of junior level employees decamping with company funds, billing for material without delivering, reporting false sales data, passing information to competition etc.

While filling vacancies in time and competency expertise in candidates is much desirable, you cannot afford to shut your eyes to integrity issues. It is time for companies to understand that no expense is greater than the cost of fraud and loss of face. By proper verification, you can save precious reputation and manage operational risk.

How safe are your new senior level hires_

How safe are your new senior level hires?

526 cases of sexual harassment of women at workplace were reported in the year 2014. And the number is only rising! Recently, another shocking and shameful incident was reported by The Times of India. A manager with a financial services major has accused a top company executive of sexually harassing her over three years and demanding that she sleep with an associate.

This revelation is disturbing. Indeed!

Putting the skates on screening processes

Putting the skates on screening processes

Night has fallen by the time Shreya finishes work in the office. That morning her husband had dropped her to work and she had said she would try and leave early and get back home herself. It worked out differently.

She now is looking for an auto rickshaw on the streets of Delhi, which look ominous past twilight. With a prayer on her lips, she gets into an auto rickshaw and is on the edge throughout the next 25 minutes. Until she can see the reassuring sight of her husband waiting at the gate of the condominium she lives in.

Imagine a different scenario. Before Shreya boards the auto rickshaw, using the registration number plate of the vehicle, she checks an online repository as a measure of precaution for the driver’s identity, criminal record, and even the authenticity of his driver’s licence. A few seconds later having ascertained the driver’s credentials, she has a peaceful, even pleasant, ride home, listening to her favourite songs from Guide.

That carefree, jaunty ride home could become a reality for Shreya and for millions of working women with real time, online repositories providing the backbone that the background screening industry needs to measure up to the needs of the instant, on-demand economy.

Online repositories will in particular be a boon for criminal history checks, surely the most important of all checks that we talk about. This is one check we can’t afford to go wrong with. Consider this: as many as 30 million criminal cases are pending in the plodding Indian judicial system. If you assume, and it’s a fair assumption, that a third of these 30 million alleged criminals are actually guilty, it’s fair to say that there could be ten million criminals roaming about this very moment.

Frightening thought, isn’t it? No, my idea is not to alarm you; it’s just to underscore that a relative feeling of safety can only come with an online repository of these alleged crooks. It requires strong technology to take centre stage to be able to crunch massive volumes of information, analyse and draw patterns, and then to produce results—all in a few seconds. Advanced text analytics, artificial intelligence techniques and powerful search algorithms will make that possible.

In discussing online repositories, traditionally the focus has been on criminal background checks where checks can be done on the basis of information available from multiple sources—courts, police, regulatory bodies, even media—and verified using intelligent technology. Technology can help monitor this information.

However, the process of data aggregation is more pain staking in case of education and employment checks. No technology-driven alternative exists. Consider a 24 x7, readily available online repository with data aggregated from multiple sources- employers and educational institutions.

A strong repository of former employees of a company or exhaustive databases with details of all students and their educational performance will undoubtedly put the background screening process on skates. This will aid the process of basic employment screening checks including verification of employment records, academics, references etc in real-time. This calls for employers and educational institutions to necessarily contribute data to help create repositories.

Is that all too futuristic? No, I don’t think so. We in India should be ready to believe its likelihood. After all, we have undertaken the unprecedented task of authenticating the identity of 1.3 billion people. What the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is doing is that a unique identity number, along with other attributes such as biometrics, is submitted to UIDAI’s Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) for verification and the repository verifies whether the data submitted matches the data available.

So, repositories could mean the end of the road for painstaking manual processes and that’s not a death any of us would grieve over. Repositories of critical data are the future of the screening process. With technology advancement and need for instant results, repositories are the solution and we are moving towards online repositories faster than we realise.

Hiring your Top Brass_ Avoid getting fooled by decorated resumes!

Hiring your Top Brass: Avoid getting fooled by decorated resumes!

With the competition for better jobs intensifying across all industry segments, verifying your top management clan has become necessary, be it either at the time of selection or at the onset of their tenure. One can be easily fooled by decorated resumes filled with accomplishments and experiences which are either fake or have been inflated. This can vary from incorrect tenure, designation, scope of the role, irrelevant references to misquoted education, salaries and more.

A customized background check of your senior hires can help you safeguard your organizational interests. Leadership Background screeningcan also be understood as an “intelligent check” on the white collar clan, to test their genuineness and fitment for the role offered.

The agenda at hand is to check material facts presented in the drawn up resume for accuracy. The presented resume should not be treated as the bible, neither should it be just another piece of paper. Checking one’s credentials listed on the resume is as critical as checking food for adulteration. Just as adulterated matter can result in slow poisoning, scrupulous seniors in your top brass can result in shorter survival, financial losses, operational risk and damage to brand reputation. The following snippets from AuthBridge case files highlight how critical information can be misrepresented/omitted/ inflated for a fancy title and additional perquisites – A senior from an IT consulting and outsourcing company was found to have criminal records & overstated credentials. There also was negative media report for his past unethical behaviour.

A CXO with a dominant mobile commerce company was found to have been involved in corrupt activities. Glaring inconsistencies in his resume brought out his fraudulent intentions. A C-suite executive from an Indian conglomerate operating in diverse sectors had indulged in fraudulent misdemeanour and omitted to mention significant details in his resume. As more people study and work abroad, it is becoming increasingly important to take background checks more seriously- more so in the case of your C suite.

How is hiring for the top brass different?

Verifying your top brass needs more focussed approach compared with other employees. At such a level, background checks need to screen elements of integrity and reputation too; checking credentials is just hygiene.Hence, professional reference check and scanning one’s character is of utmost importance. AuthBridge, in the past few years, has found out that 20 out of 250 leadership screenings had discrepancies using its customised offering AuthLead.

So screen your senior-level hires in a robust, detailed and comprehensive way.

Challenges in global background verification

Challenges in global background verification

When is Global Screening required?

When hiring an applicant with international education or multi-country employment experience. When hiring a workforce for offices in other countries. When is Global Screening required?

 

Global screening differs from domestic screening in many ways:

Deeper knowledge of global laws and regulations related to global background checks and data security is much needed. Country or region-wise restrictions in procuring information on criminal and credit records by outside country third parties. Data privacy or data transfer laws with increased cost and turnaround times. Many questions come to mind when talking about global verification:

Do you hire candidates with overseas education/ experience?

Do you hire expats?

Do you have International offices/branches?

Is background verification of overseas candidates a challenge?

Do you need an automated platform for global background verification?

Which global checks would your organization opt for?

 

Why is Global Screening important?

Global screening is turning too relevant owing to the increased hiring from across geographies.The intention is to avoid rising incidents of employment and education fraud, worldwide, protecting global brand reputation, keeping in mind aspects of compliance, candidate competency, physical, legal and financial risk.

 

What are the major challenges of Global Screening, today?

  1. Right vendor selection
  2. Authenticity of verification responses
  3. Uncertainty of risk mitigation
  4. Non-compliance with global laws
  5. High costs
  6. Slow processing

For many businesses, compliance with a myriad of federal, state, and local laws is a challenging task, which is why global background verification needs to be carefully done. Consent of the candidate is equally required in countries as an obligation and is legally enforceable too. Nowadays, it is very well accepted as a best practice everywhere.

Are business and service companies ensuring adequate customer safety this Diwali_

Are business and service companies ensuring adequate customer safety this Diwali?

Ensure customer security while your representatives meet, deliver services and interact with customers and others. The festival of lights is almost upon us. While organisations and people get charged with positive energy bursting crackers, painting rangolis and exchanging presents and sweets, it is also important for all to ensure complete security and avoid any mishaps from happening. We are not referring to keeping away from crackers but keeping safe from people and vendors!

 

From an organisation point of view

Consider this. You are an on-demand food delivery aggregator. On the festive occasion of Diwali, your customer places order for sweets and feast with you. While the order is being delivered to the customer, how do you ensure that your customer is not at risk and the delivery man is not a criminal? Even worse, what if the delivery man is actually not the person who was supposed to deliver the order? Not being physically present on the ground, how can you avoid accidents to happen which can have massive repercussion for your customers? Moving away from the on-demand economy, consider you are a traditional business wanting to partner with vendors for managing supplies this Diwali. Have you ensured that the vendor is genuine and the company exists? Have you completed a due diligence on the vendor?

 

From a customer point of view

Consider this. You decide to call over house cleaning staff from leading on-demand service providers. These service providers will in turn route your request to a local business who will send their staff to your house. While you are away, your children and your family’s security might be at stake. What if the cleaner is a criminal in disguise? All the stories above can be viewed from both an organisation as well as an end- customer point of view. Similarly, customer security might be compromised while they pool a cab this Diwali to meet relatives!  Businesses might me up for a soup while they on-board vendors with fake capabilities and credentials.

 

How can businesses ensure that their customers are in safe hands?

As a responsible and customer centric business/service provider, you must be extra cautious when employing people to deliver services to the end customers. The customers not only rely on the services providers for good quality products and services but also expect full safety when the product/service arrives. The solution here is to conduct a thorough background screening. Background verification services offers a range of checks from identity verification, criminal history check, address check, reference check, education and employment verification and many more checks to ensure that the vendor/person you are interacting with is genuine and does not have any black records which can impact your business and brand reputation. (Click here for detailed understanding on why on-demand economy essentially needs thorough background screening) Background screening services aids the process of hiring the right set of people to serve customers and ensure their safety.

With the growing number of start-ups, on-demand companies and high risk ventures, this is the most suitable time for healthy beginning. As customers, one should ensure that their vendors/service providers conduct background screening as a part of the hiring and partnering process. AuthBridge, one of the leading global background screening Services Company offers range

11 questions to your background screener before choosing criminal history check

11 Questions to Ask Before Choosing Criminal History Check

An employer may or may not know what all checks including criminal check to be conducted on a prospective hire. But do not be put down with your inadequate knowledge of background screening processes. A trustworthy, well-equipped and technology enabled background screening company could be an ideal choice.

Confront your background screener with top criminal history check questions as presented below:

What are the types of criminal checks?

Which one is more comprehensive?

What is the process to conduct criminal record check?

What all information will be captured under a criminal check?

Which locations make it challenging to execute criminal check with effective turnaround time adhering to the regulatory framework?

Can separate criminal record checks conducted on the same candidate within a short span of time yield different results?

How will technology help in easing out the process?

What automation will be used? What steps are taken to ensure that criminal records are not missed?

How accurate are the results? Can the results be challenged?

For how long will the information about a candidate be kept intact?

Which verification bodies are involved? The right set of background verification questions before conducting a criminal check is highly crucial. Conduct criminal check on your potential hire to avoid any legal hassles in the future! Be vigilant, stay updated!

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Vice President, F&A Commercial,
Greenlam

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