“Steven Speilberg’s ‘Catch Me If You Can’ would have been a 60-second commercial if organizations back then had a practice of employment verification!”
Summary
Previous employment verification is a necessary check to validate the professional claims of a candidate and establish trust. As organizations are realizing that remote working is not just a fad but a reality, previous employment verification, and background checks, in general, have taken the center stage!
Previous employment verification validates the professional claims of a candidate. The fields getting verified generally include employee name, employee ID, joining date, last working date, designation, work location, and terms of deboarding.
Compensation and some basic behavioral attributes are also verified, but many ex-employers have a policy of not revealing too much information on these data fields.
Why employment verification process?
Organizations may have different sets of objectives for employee screening, but the top reason that we observe across HR leads and recruiters is Accountability. A candidate with forged, exaggerated, or counterfeit employment credentials can create several risks for the organization.
The top 4 reasons for runnings background checks and especially previous employment verification are:
- To avoid wrong hires who have indulged in resume/CV fraud
- Avoid impact on other team members and overall performance
- Avoid information or data leakage / theft
- Protect brand
- Creating a safe and secure work environment
- Ensuring ISO/HR compliance
- Meet client needs (and contractual obligations) that require employees working on their projects to be verified
Employment record discrepancy is among one of the highest background verification failures and poses a high risk for organizations.
Employment verification process
Organizations can have an internal team or an HR team member run this activity by reaching out to the previous organization’s HR team (mostly via email) to validate the employment details claimed. The document that comes in handy while making this verification request is the experience letter or service certificate.
It is also important to realize that taking consent of the employee is not just a regulatory requirement, but also the right approach to running any background checks, especially from an employee privacy standpoint.
However, the HR teams sometimes run into a challenge as they are not sure about the contact information of previous employers’ HR team, and thus verification becomes a wild goose chase. Collecting ex-employment information and documents, taking consent, and maintaining the records in a secure and structured manner can also be cumbersome. An alternative and effective way to achieve this is through a third-party background verification platform such as OnGrid.
OnGrid’s digital trust platform is equipped to collect necessary information, documents, and consent from the employees directly, and complete 95% of verification requests within a week. OnGrid’s portal with state-of-the-art reports and dashboard provides real-time status and information visibility and allows HR users to download an audit-ready report that comes reviewed as per industry standards.
Fields that can be verified include:
- Employee name
- Employee ID
- Joining date
- Last working date
- Designation
- Work location
- Terms of deboarding (eg. Resigned and Relieved, Served Notice Period, F&F settlement completed)
- Compensation
- Performance and behavioral attributes (can be related to discipline, integrity, etc.)
To know more about this process, book a free demo now!
| OnGrid helps you with verifying your new joiners. To know more about our investments into creating a global digital infrastructure for making ex-employee verification instant, check out eLockr – a new-age way for issuance of credentials to your ex-employees that can be verified instantly with their consent. For ex-employers who want to participate on the network, eLockr is absolutely free! |
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