Have a look at these eminent personalities: Scott Thompson – The brand new CEO of Yahoo has to go through a major ordeal of late. Though Yahoo had hired Mr. Thompson to bring forth some profitable change to the fortunes of the company, a small misrepresentation (a false computer science degree) in the credentials of the CEO’s resume has caused a lot of misery to the company. The integrity of the company and the CEO is put to scrutiny because of this small error. Many including me might argue that Mr. Thomson has a very successful track record and is a highly qualified executive – What is the big deal? The big deal is that a lot of others, who are equally qualified or better, have valid degrees and are good too, are left behind and lose a chance of their lifetime. Secondly, this could have been avoided if proper checks such as education verifications had been carried out at the earlier stages. General VK Singh - This gentleman has a picture perfect track record right from the start of his career. The honorable Chief of the Army staff has been a recipient of many awards like the Param Vishist Seva Medal and others. Yet almost in the dead end of his glorious career, he is being demeaned because his date or birth had been misrepresented in his NDA enrollment form. A small error years ago has come to haunt him and the entire nation as well, as this topic has become the media’s favorite for months now. Succession rows, bribery and other scandals follow, but the root of the story was a small error. A 1950 instead of 1951 in an application form! Scary! Pal Schmitt – Even Presidents are under the magnifying glass. Pal Schmitt, the former President of Hungary, was stripped of his role and his doctorate degree because a thesis that he had submitted in 1992 was proven to have a lot of copied content! Corporate bigwigs, high ranking government officials, even Presidents are being dethroned. The more successful or higher in the corporate ladder a person is, the more danger lurks around the corner. It is the crab mentality. There are many who want to scalp the leaders. Therefore, it is better and safe for both the individual and the organization to maintain clean and clear credentials.

When we look at such cases, two thoughts come to my mind.

• Please refrain completely from falsifying or copying.
• All background verifications should be done properly, right from the beginning to avoid any discrepancy at all. It really becomes very painful when one is stripped off his position at the top of the ladder due to a small error buried deep in the debris of history!

The Social Media Scan offering from JantaKhoj aims to leverage the publicly available information in an ethical and fair manner, providing more details to the recruiters, and letting them take more informed decisions in the area of employee background checks. What do you think? What is your take on using social media for background checks? ]]> http://www.jantakhoj.com/blog/2012/04/social-media-for-background-checks-%e2%80%93-the-rights-and-wrongs/feed/ 0 http://www.jantakhoj.com/blog/2012/04/background-checks-for-work-experience-outside-of-industry/ http://www.jantakhoj.com/blog/2012/04/background-checks-for-work-experience-outside-of-industry/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:37:36 +0000 Tarun http://www.jantakhoj.com/blog/?p=669 Recently I saw a question from an HR professional in one of the popular HR forums – whether background checks should be done to verify the work experience of a candidate coming from a teaching / academic environment. This can be expanded to cover other spheres outside of the private or for-profit industry including government, NGOs, research institutes and even religious and cultural institutions.

I think that the doubt stems from the fact that some of these non-private industry entities may not be doing background verification on their current employees and also it may be tough to get employment verifications done from them. So it may be an easy way out just to assume that the claimed employment is correct and to NOT do any further verification.

This assumption represents a very serious breach in the organizational policy for background checks. These checks should be applied uniformly across any type of work experience. In fact, it is even more important to undertake stringent work experience checks when a candidate DOES NOT belong to private or for-profit industry. Some of the more intelligent and crafty candidates may claim employment in such domains because they know that it is quite tough to get formal verifications from such organizations.

So the best practice would be to apply the same rigor for employment background checks across any sector or domain and to let the specialists in a professional background verification agency to do the job for you.

Background verification refers to verification of the various credentials associated with the candidates/individuals under consideration. These would include facts that are claimed by the candidates regarding their ID, contact details including residence, education, employment, reference, or criminal records. The background verification process would try to find out if these claimed credentials are true or not. In certain cases, additional feedback or observations around the character or personality attributes of the candidates may come out but these are not per se the core information being desired. The core remains the verification of the credentials provided by candidates. And in nearly all these cases, this is done with the authorization from and consent of the candidate.

Detective type investigation goes one step beyond the background verification. It aims to find out more facts, which may not have been supplied by the candidates. Depending upon the client’s requirement, it may include other activities like shadowing the candidates for a period of few days to weeks to establish behaviours, habits, social (or even anti-social!) interactions, character assessment, past and present relationships and the nature of these relationships. It is typically done in a clandestine manner so that the candidate is not aware that such gathering of facts is being done. Thus the consent or authorization of the candidate is not applicable as that may defeat the very purpose of investigation.

Background verification services provided by JantaKhoj and other such professional background verification agencies are limited to verification only and do not go within the realm of detective type investigation work. So depending upon the specific requirement, clients should either go to such background verification agencies or to detective / investigative agencies.

While it is important to have all the employees undergo background verification process, it is even more important to have the non-employees or contractors undergo these checks. It cannot be assumed that the contract employee provider or temporary staffing agency would have done exhaustive background checks on these contractors, the reason being that the vendors are operating on slim margins and the extensive background checks would just add further to their costs. Additionally, there is a conflict of interest for the vendors because if something negative turns up in the background checks, they tend to lose out on the placement of that candidate.

There have been quite a few criminal episodes in which drivers or security guards were directly involved as perpetrators. In light of these, it is important for the employing companies to ensure that they keep their workforce safe by having each of the contractors undergo even more stringent background checks than what their own employees undergo. If cost is becoming an issue, then at the minimum, they should conduct address and criminal verifications on these contractors as recommended in one of the earlier blogs – What to do when an employee or contractor with clean criminal record does not remain ‘clean’?

In summary, HR should ensure that all contractors and temporary employees undergo adequate background checks to ensure workplace safety and to have a genuinely qualified workforce.

BPO – The BPO sector in India has attained maturity. In this sector lots of sensitive information, critical processes, and clients’ confidential information is outsourced to India. However, there have been a few major incidents of data theft, money laundering, and leakage of sensitive information. The Indian BPO industry has occasionally faced trust issues. Companies have finally realized the importance of conducting stringent background checks and hiring honest people.

Banking, Financial Services, Insurance – This sector is the most vulnerable as there could be multiple types of frauds such as bribery, identity thefts, phishing, misappropriation of accounts among others. It therefore is necessary to do a complete background check, including criminal records check while hiring new employees. In this sector honesty and integrity matter more than anything else.

Pharma/Biotech – The pharmaceutical industry in India has a very high attrition rate, particularly in the case of field officers. Hiring carefully, therefore, becomes critical. It would not be a wise decision to hire people who have a history of jumping across organizations flamboyantly.

HR/Staffing Services – The HR is the face of an organization. The HR shapes the organization by hiring the right people. If the recruiter is faulty, everything else goes for a toss. Hiring HR personnel who has a good understanding of the industry requirements is crucial. An HR who is unbiased and prioritizes the best interests of the company and the employees, over personal targets would be the ideal choice.

Media and Entertainment – In these times media has become the voice of the masses. They are the ones who stir the government repeatedly and wake them up from their deep slumber. The media personnel need to be unbiased and honest. They need to be able to stay away from the lure of money when they cover reports exposing the rich and the corrupt.

Hospitality and Travel – This sector has a different story to tell. It is easy to fill up the senior and middle management positions but the problem herein lies with the entry-level hires. Due to better growth prospects in the IT, BPO, Banking and retail industries, freshers tend to stay away from this sector. As a result, this sector has not been able to attract good talent. Therefore, the industry is filled with untrained and unskilled resources. Such an approach is definitely not good for this sector in the long run. It only makes good sense to hire people who have the penchant for this profession and are able to do well in this industry.

Retail – According to the Global retail theft barometer, India suffered the highest loss of stocks consecutively for the fifth year. Shockingly, the average amount stolen by employees was four times more than the average stolen by customers. These numbers are a reflection of the organized retail. When it comes to unorganized retail both the employer and employee steal from the inventory to fulfill their own domestic needs. This makes the employee background checks even more critical.

Therefore, as we see, each sector has its own challenges and the need to hire people with honesty and integrity transcends across industries. Can one HR interview judge everything? No. However, a completely verified background verification report certainly can go a long way. Food for thought.

This blog post will look at the unfortunate situation which can occur for any employer – whether a business or an individual – when the employed person initially had a clean criminal record but ended up indulging in some criminal activity.

This is the reality of life. As the financial product / service disclaimers read – ‘past performance is no guarantee of the future returns’, so it is with the world of criminal background checks. A clean criminal record does NOT indicate that the person will always remain crime free. The will to indulge in criminal act can arise at any point of time – there always is the first time when a person will turn into a criminal.

So in such cases, there is no point in wondering how this could have happened as the past criminal record was clean. The best thing is to call in the police and share all the earlier reports and employee information with them. This is the point where earlier filed documents like ID proofs, address proofs and address verification reports will come in valuable. These will give a very good starting point to the police for their investigations.

And this also goes to highlight that doing just criminal checks is not sufficient. You need to save the ID, address proofs and also get address verifications done – preferably both on current and permanent addresses. This also answers the query which some of our clients (especially those who are business of providing contractors or any blue collar workers) have – they must get criminal and address verifications done, at the minimum.

With a view to help answer this query, we have launched a new Verification Selector Tool which allows the users to interactively enter their input and to receive recommendations for different types of background checks that may be useful for them. The tool allows selection of industry, hierarchy level of the employees being hired, and functional areas for these employees, along with a host of other criteria. Then the tool suggests various background checks (like address, criminal records, criminal database, education, employment, reference, social media).

The tool also allows the user to mail these results to their own email ids and/or to share these with JantaKhoj team if they are interested in detailed consultation.

So please give the Verification Selector Tool a spin and let us know how you find it.

Nowadays several agencies offer trained domestic help. In the age of nuclear families wherein one no longer has the luxury of the doting grandparents watching over the children, such support systems certainly turn out be much more convenient. Wouldn’t you prefer a well-mannered, educated nanny to take care of your kids, and train them with the right set of do’s and don’ts rather than a bai watching TV, leaving your child unkempt and unfettered?

There is an alarming increase of thefts in the city as well, and the credit goes to some of these part time maids, who have successfully formed a crime network. They steal and pass on the stolen items to the pawn brokers. Pawnbrokers are also under scrutiny, as they do not verify the actual source of a stolen ornament. There is no way to retrieve a stolen item even if one lodges a police complaint. This is exactly what happened with one of my colleagues recently. She had employed a maid, who claimed that the apartment security guard had sent her. My colleague did not bother doing a domestic help background check. Just a week in the house and there was a theft in the house. She had guests at home for a week and the maid grabbed the opportunity and stole her guest’s jewelry. My colleague lodged a complaint with the police. Attempted to call and locate the maid. The maid had simply disappeared. Later she was informed that the same maid had duped many in the colony. Moreover, no one could do anything about it. So that sums up the sad state of domestic help in the Indian cities. Now she is determined not to keep any house help without getting a complete background check done. It is a case of once bitten, twice shy.

Domestic help crimes cases have continued to increase and occupy a major chunk of the newspaper dailies. Incidents such as these – maid steals debit card – withdrawing lakhs of rupees, planned crimes by house help couples, murders etc. have become commonplace. Nevertheless, who is aiding these people to continue in such a manner? Who is to be blamed? It is “we.” We want to hire house help, pay them five hundred rupees for the month, expect complete loyalty and sincerity, and thereby end up losing much more.

It is a much better and safer option therefore, to hire house help/nannies/drivers from trustworthy agencies that provide verified and trained employees. They do come at higher price but with the promise of trust and safety. There are some reputed providers or platforms like GetDomestic Help.com and Babajob.com. These companies have a good track record of providing trained and verified individuals who help in making your life happier and stress free.