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.
Background Verifications | Manish | 
May 11, 2011 7:45 am
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By indira, May 12, 2011 @ 3:15 pm
Finally a post that looks at an employee for what they our worth. Great post.
By John, February 2, 2012 @ 2:07 pm
Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up and Pretty good post, this is one of the best articles that I have ever seen! This is a great site and I have to congratulate you on the content.
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