Five Reasons for using Social Media as a Background Verification tool

The internet has become a integral part of our daily lives. It has become an extension of our personalities and can provide an insight into an individual’s psyche. Below are the top five reasons for using the social media as a quick background verification tool.

1. Social media sites such as LinkedIn provide an easy and quick way to verify a candidate’s professional background. They also allow HR manager to check on the references provided by the candidate’s co-workers. The credentials cited on LinkedIn would generally not be wildly off from the reality as the risk of openly claiming false credentials is very high. A LinkedIn profile consists of a person’s current and previous co-workers and hence any exaggeration by the candidate of his job responsibilities could lead to an immediate correction in form of posts on the candidates profile by his co-workers. Additionally, if a candidate has claimed a false employment, the administrator of the company page (if it exists on LinkedIn) can always flag the employment as incorrect.

2. Facebook provides the HR manager a peek into the candidate’s personal profile. It allows the HR manager to understand the candidate’s lifestyle and its compatibility with the job profile at hand. Facebook allows HR mangers to understand the company a candidate keeps, his preferences in terms of the groups he has joined, among others.

Facebook is one social media where people tend to express themselves without any inhibitions. A clear analysis of a person’s Facebook profile can allow for a clear assessment of his lifestyle.

3. The blogosphere can be searched to find articles, comments posted by the candidate being evaluated. This search helps the HR managers understand the candidate’s proficiency in his field of expertise by going through the articles the candidate may have posted on various blogs. It also allows for understanding the candidate’s thought process by going through the comments or feedbacks the candidate has posted on other blogs or forums.

4. The micro blogosphere such as Twitter can be used to understand the candidate’s other interests. This can be done by going through the candidate’s tweets posts and understanding the links or articles that he promotes via his Twitter account.

5. A Google Alert can be set for the candidate under scrutiny. This will allow any update about the candidate to flow into the HR managers email account and provide access to all the online updates that the candidates makes.

Social media can help the HR managers make the initial set of preliminary checks on the candidate. However the information gleaned from these networks is to be interpreted properly so that it is not taken out of context. The social media check can act as gateway for the initial set of interviews. However it is advised that a through offline background check is carried out before finalizing on an employee.

Background Check Enforcement Versus The Need to Hire – An HR Manager’s Dilemma

Background checks have become an essential part of the hiring process. Background checks make it easier for the HR managers to select and hire the right candidate. However in today’s market there is an abundance of jobs and finding the right candidate within the stipulated salary package has become an arduous task. This is especially true in the case of small to medium sized companies. The consistent pressure on HR managers to increase head count combined with the dearth of talent may lead to overlooking of the facts presented in the candidates’ background check report.

The question then arises on the importance of the employee background verification report and the value of the information provided therein. It becomes important to understand the anatomy of a background report before we dwell on its importance. The employee verification report primarily provides the following information on a candidate

1. Professional Qualification Validation
2. Education Qualification Validation
3. Reference Checks
4. Criminal Record Check
5. Address Verification

The different elements of a background report provide validation of the qualifications and information as submitted by the candidate thereby acting as a character analyzer of sorts. Professional and educational verification allows the HR manager to ensure that the candidate has the required experience and qualification to properly execute the job functions that he is being hired for.

Reference checks can help provide insight into the candidate’s performance as a team player, attitude and his work ethics. A criminal record check allows the HR manager to develop a safe and secure work atmosphere, by outright rejection of the candidate with a criminal record. Then again I am not saying that candidates with criminal records should not be given a fair chance. The decision on hiring a candidate with criminal record depends on multiple factors such as severity of the crime, overall qualifications, among other.

Address verification is an important check specially for companies that are into the software development business and where employees have access to sensitive information. It allows the company to track down absconding employee in the rare case of software or information theft.

Employee background verifications provide the HR managers with the required information to make a intelligent decision whether the decision is based on pure merit or on the HR managers intuition.

Depending on the company and the position for which a candidate is being hired, the HR manager can choose to show leniency on some discrepancies between the information provided by the candidate and that in his/her background check report.

However it is important that the candidate be made aware of the discrepancy being overlooked. This would prevent the candidate from developing a sense of arrogance in being able to cheat the system.

I can’t emphasize enough the fact that background checks are crucial for having access to unbiased and validated information of a candidate. This information acts as a strong supplement in making the HR manager’s hiring decisions easier. Eventually the magic of hiring, nurturing and retaining a high performance staff has to be created by the HR manager.

Background checks – what to do when a great candidate has a negative employer reference

Employee attrition rates are at an all time high. Employment opportunities abound and an employee’s appetite for professional and financial growth has become insatiable. Many companies have mushroomed over the past decade. Most of these companies promise candidates the sky, during the hiring process but fall flat on delivering them. These unfulfilled promises lead to employee discontent, which results in the employee looking for other job options and eventually leaving the company.

This sudden loss of an employee may not have a big impact on the workings of a multinational company however it may disrupt the flow of business for a small company. Instead of understanding the reason for the high attrition rate within the company, the company may bear a grudge against the candidate and may dish out references that adversely affect the employee’s prospects of getting hired elsewhere.

The point I am trying to make is that there are always two sides of a story – in this case one side being the company and the other the employee. A professional employee background verification company can help gather all facts about the employee. This includes educational and professional verification, reference checks, calls to the company of previous employment to get more feedback on the candidate, etc. However there tends to be a lack of information about the culture, and inner workings of the company.

The responsibility to distinguish the facts from fiction falls squarely on the shoulders of the HR managers. An HR manager can have all the information about a new hire but in the end information is only as good as a person’s ability to decrypt it.

A point in case could be a new hires resume that shows the candidate to be a good fit for the company. The HR manager, with the candidate’s approval, runs a background check on this candidate. The results of the background check look promising and validate the educational and professional qualifications outlined by the candidate in his resume. However there ends up being one negative feedback provided by a manager at the candidate’s’ previous employer. Now the question to consider is whether the single negative feedback should be taken at face value and the candidate be rejected or should the discrepancy be studied further?

The easy and quick way out would be to take the negative feedback at face value and reject the candidate. But isn’t employee satisfaction about spending time to understand the employee? Is it too early to start building relationship from the pre-employment phase? The candidate in question should be allowed to provide an explanation for the negative feedback that he received. This explanation can provide the hiring HR manager an insight into the work culture of  candidate’s previous company. The work culture information provided by the candidate can be easily verified by a quick online search about the company.

If the HR manager is convinced about the candidates explanation and all other qualifications are met then the candidate should hired. The hired candidate will be appreciative of the extra effort the HR manager put in to understand his side of the story and this in turn will make him a more dedicated employee.