How LinkedIn is reshaping the world of HR and Background Verifications

In this post I will review the recent interview of LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, featured on CNNMoney.com, and will try to draw out some trends for the Indian HR professionals and background verification industry.

LinkedIn is the tsunami that is just about to hit Indian recruiting if it already has not. India has the second largest number of professional profiles (15 million + as on 29 May 2012) on LinkedIn. Already most of the recruiters are using LinkedIn for searching, looking up and contacting potential candidates. While the traditional job portals like Naukri, Monster, TimesJobs and Shine are still generating substantial revenues, they are bound to see a significant drop in the future as the Recruiting Solutions from LinkedIn continue to get more popular.

As Jeff says in the interview, “Yeah, recruiters are paying for unlimited access to the entire repository.  They’re paying for access to tools that you can’t otherwise get in the free ecosystem.   An example of that would be what we call Recruiter, which is our flagship recruiting product, and that enables recruiters to do unlimited searches, share the results.  We’ve now added an additional service to that called Talent Pipeline, which enables recruiters to manage the pipeline of prospects that they’re finding either on LinkedIn or off LinkedIn, job posts, a social layer on those job posts, so people can see who they know within a company that they’re applying to up to 3 degrees to get their foot in the door.  We enable recruiters who are not at larger companies with larger budgets to purchase a subscription package so when they post a job they can get recommendations, et cetera.”

As far as background verification or representation of correct credentials is concerned, we can interpret that people are more prone to lying on their non-public resumes (that would also include the ones that candidates post on job portals or send via electronic or physical means). In contrast, there is a lesser likelihood of misrepresentation when shared on a public platform like LinkedIn. So there is a “self-policing” mechanism which Jeff feels that will keep people honest. Additional, as he mentions, “any individual member on LinkedIn has the ability to flag content on LinkedIn that they believe is inaccurate or a misrepresentation of whatever the underlying information is about, whether that’s an individual’s profile, a company profile, et cetera.”

This is good news for recruiters as they have access to somewhat cleaner and more accurate credentials. But does this do away with the need for background verification? Absolutely not! While the credentials may be relatively clean, there still will be individuals who will misrepresent their credentials in professional and academic areas. So these still need to be verified thoroughly through employment and education verifications. Additionally, elements of background verification like address, criminal history, social media and web hits and to a certain extent, references, are beyond the scope of LinkedIn as it current stands. These need to be completed for comprehensive background checks.

So, recruiters and HR professionals in India, are you fully “LinkedIn”?

categories Background Verifications | Tarun | datetime June 19, 2012 3:31 pm | comments Comments (3)

What is Financial Verification?

The recent Prem and Bhagat story is just another feather in the cap of the series of scams that haunt the Indian business scenario. Big investors like L N Mittal are looking at other favorable destinations owing to deep-rooted corruption in the Indian business ecosystem.

In most blogs, we have emphasized the importance of background checks to wipe out corruption. However, there is one very important element that cannot be neglected and that is Financial Verification . Money laundering, misappropriation of accounts, identity theft and others cannot be tackled by background verifications alone. However, through financial verification money movement can be identified. It involves checking employee financial records such as real estate, bank account statements among others.

Yearly financial audits are conducted in companies but what is brewing within employee accounts is not generally much of a concern. Many financial frauds thereby find their origin from such discrepancies. Employment credit check is a common practice in the west but it is not a very common practice in India except for in the case of loan applications. An employment credit check is a credit report prepared for the employers. It contains current and historical credit payment and balance information. It contains information about any irregularities in the employee’s credit history.

On a deeper thought, why do such bulk money transactions that account for major frauds, go unnoticed at all? Every transaction occurs through proper bank channels or through regulated authorities. Why doesn’t someone raise an alarm when they smell something fishy?

To ensure more transparency in the system, monitoring bank account transactions as well as forex accounts is extremely important. Wrong doers must know that they will be caught. People who are stashing away millions illegally in Swiss accounts and others must know that they cannot get away with it anymore.

In general anybody is wary of disclosing information about their bank statements, property and other assets. In fact even background verification companies cannot very openly enquire about an employees pay slips or bank statements, as it is not deemed ethical. What we have to figure out is, can we allow corruption to meander so deep in the system in the name of ethics?

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categories Background Verifications | Indira | datetime June 14, 2012 12:00 pm | comments Comments (2)

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