Why is Verification necessary?

Verification has become absolutely essential nowadays. As the job market becomes more and more competitive, resume falsification has become common place. There are many examples of falsifications out there which range from cunning to outrageous. As Anne Fisher reports in her article for Fortune:

“One applicant put experience on his resume that was actually his father’s. (They both had the same name — one Senior, the other Junior.) Another claimed to have been a construction supervisor, but further digging revealed that his only construction experience was building a backyard doghouse. And then there was the candidate who claimed to have been the assistant to the prime minister, in a country that has no prime minister.”

Numbers don’t lie and a study by CareerBuilder shows the true depth of the problem. 2000 hiring managers were part of the case study and this what was discovered:

• 58% of the managers have spotted exaggerations and falsifications on the resume.
• 33% of the managers have said that the problem has gotten worse since the recession.

Having seen these numbers, you might be thinking that companies are probably investing a significant amount of money in verification services. Unfortunately, that is not so.

Why aren’t companies investing more in Verification?

Most companies, especially BPOs, Retail and Labor-Intensive manufacturing companies don’t usually pay that much attention to verification. This is mainly because of two reasons:

• The increasing demand for man-power means that the companies are usually in a hurry to hire people.
• Most companies simply don’t want to pay a lot of money for verification.

As a senior recruitment consultant was quoted as saying:

“A majority of companies are not very comfortable with the additional expense of verifying past employment. What they do not realize is that it is not money going down the drain. The process of verifying employees can help one make the best possible hiring decision”

Let’s look at each of the issues — Time and Money more closely:

How much time does Verification take?

As ChoiceScreening says, employment verification can be a time consuming process and can test one’s patience. This is the reason why most companies usually just stick to rudimentary reference checks via people who have been nominated by the candidate in the first place.

The problem with employee verification checks is that there are a lot of different types of checks that need to be done. It is not a “one size fit all”.

Within employment verification you have checks like:

• Address checks: To verify the residence of the candidate.
• Employment checks: To check up past employment records.
• Education checks: To check whether the candidate really is as qualified as they say they are.
• Criminal Checks: To check whether the candidate has any criminal history.

All these things add and end up costing the company a lot of time. In fact it can take weeks to verify one single candidate!

How much money does Verification cost?

As you may have already gathered from the previous section, verification is not really the most cost-effective process. According to Criminal Watch Dog, a nation wide criminal background check alone costs $25-$45 per candidate.

Depending on a company’s requirements, one check may not be enough, they may have to go for multiple checks. Eg. if a candidate has mentioned that they have changed residence three times, then a company may want to go for 3 address checks to validate that claim.

On top of that, the verification service provider used also adds up to the cost. Eg. a more expensive service provider will produce better results than a cheaper alternative.

All these things add up and discourage a company from doing extensive verification checks. However, this may lead to a lot of risks. To make verification faster and more affordable, many companies are now using QR codes to link directly to verified credentials or reports. This simple step, often created using the  best QR code generator, tools available online that helps reduce time and paperwork while ensuring authenticity.

What are the risks of non-verification?

As Greenhouse.io states, there are four major risks of not conducting verification checks on your candidates.

• Creating distrust: If you want your company to function properly then you will need to find employees you can completely trust to do their job. How can you even hope to do that if you are unsure about the credentials of the people that you have employed?
• Fraud & Cybercrime: In 2014, the Associate of Certified Fraud Examiners discovered that a $3.7 trillion is stolen annually via fraud! Verizon noted that 20% of the recent cybercrime breaches have happened because of insider misconduct. This just goes to show how critical it is for companies to do thorough background checks of their potential employees.
• Putting end users at risk: When an Uber driver was convicted of rape and sexual assault in India, there was an uproar when it was discovered that the company didn’t bother to do a background check of the driver in question. 
   If your employee is directly interacting with the end customer and is caught indulging some form of misconduct, then one of the first questions that will be asked is if you did a verification check or not.
• Unsafe Workspace: An employer must make sure that they provide a healthy and safe workspace for their employees. Workspace related violence can not only cause physical damage to their employees, it can cause tremendous mental harm as well.

  Unfortunately, SHRM has mentioned that 36% of the employees have noted some form of workplace violence. This is something that could be easily avoided by a background check of the employees. A simple criminal record check can show whether the given candidate is prone to violence or not.

How SpringRole solves the verification problem.

SpringRole is a platform where people can view, share and get attestations on their professional profile, thereby creating a verified resume that they can others can trust. A user’s professional profile contains three parts:

• Educational qualifications.
• Work experience.
• Skill-set.

Each of these three will have their own flows to get attested and once they are verified, we write them to the blockchain. These claims, once verified, will not have to be re-verified in the future and can be relied upon. Because of the immutable nature of the blockchain, once data has been entered into the chain it cannot be tampered with.

Any claims that are related to education and work can easily verified and resolved by the organizations involved. However, things get tricky when it comes to judging one’s skills. Most organizations have started incorporating tests and exams to judge one’s expertise — however they are mostly lacking for the following reasons:

• Exams can be gamed and must be maintained and standardized by a central authority.
• Exams suffer from narrow scope and are only able to capture facets of the skill-set that are objective in nature.

We realized that a more exact method was required to judge the proficiency of a user’s skillset. Our solution was to crowdsource a user’s reputation on a particular skill.

People in the user’s network endorse his/her proficiency in a skill, independently or at the user’s request. The number of people endorsing it and their individual scores in the particular skill that they are endorsing lets us compute a score for each user per skill and is a way to assess the skill level of a person. In appropriate situations, examinations are easily incorporated in this approach; but it can capture much more nuance in skill level.

Hence the platform will have two key facets:

• Crowd-sourcing your reputation in a particular skill via endorsements.
• Verifying and validating your professional details via organizational attestations.

So, to summarize, this method will create a platform wherein it is nearly impossible for an employee to get away with bogus attestations AND it will create a verification system for employers where:

• Verification will be cost effective. (re-usable)
• Verification will be a small matter of checking a candidate’s entry instead of going through an entire multi-level process and hence will be extremely cost-effective.

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Draft Whitepaper: here.

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The post Simplifying The Employee Verification Process appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

We will showcase how upcoming technologies can solve multiple issues the industry faces and how we can make lives better by reducing manual work while instilling trust across the ecosystem.

If you haven’t already, you should read our first blog in this series, that talks about whether it is time to move on from traditional resume verification processes (hint: yes, it is!).

Hiring a new candidate is a tricky process. As the market becomes more and more competitive, it is all the more essential to find quality employees with a high level of expertise in your industry. But at the same time, it is difficult to accept someone at face value — after all, there is a saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.

What can go wrong?

‘Red Foods Ltd.’, a food company, hired a new accountant to help with managing the accounts of the company since it had recently expanded to three more locations. They had discovered him through an online networking platform, and were impressed with his profile.

All was going well until the time came to file taxes — the new accountant misrepresented the profits that the company had made, in order to embezzle some. The owners were fined and given a warning. On top of that, the new hire had to be terminated, and more money spent on hiring a new accountant. This led to unnecessary losses for the company.

On further inspection, it was discovered that the accountant had actually done the same thing in his previous job, and was fired for the same thing! He had hidden the fact that he was fired, and misrepresented facts related to his previous position. Had a background check been done, these would have come to light.

To be effective in your hiring, it is essential to delve into the background of the candidate, to uncover any information that the candidate may have hidden or misrepresented, in order to make the most informed hiring decision.

A person’s persona may not be what is seems to be online.

Platforms like LinkedIn enable you to build a professional digital network online. However, there is no background check to the information that is uploaded on the network. The same applies for networks like Facebook and Twitter as well.

It is very possible that the persona that a person has built online may not be 100% representative of that person’s true background. It is very easy to ‘craft’ a persona online, with no way to easily verify whether the information that is being posted is genuine or fabricated.

Why is background verification required?

While most employers don’t assume that candidates will lie in their profiles, background verification is a necessary final step to make sure that the employer is getting what they think they are getting; to save them from any future complications.

1: Background verification gives you a full picture of the candidate.

It is quite possible that the candidate has put on a façade on their resume — they might have added information that is fabricated, or may have removed other information that they don’t want the employer to see.

This may (read: will) put a strain on the hiring manager’s ability to make an informed decision while in the process of hiring a candidate. It is of utmost importance to know every relevant thing about a candidate before choosing to hire them or not.

2: Background verification allows the employer to fulfil their due diligence.

This is especially important in job positions involving sensitive information or persons, for example an accountant or teacher. If an incident occurs, and it is discovered that the person has a history involving related incidents, then the company can get into trouble for hiring an individual with such a history.

If background verification is done, the entire history of an individual is known before a hiring decision is made. And this is part of the due diligence that is a must for a company to do before hiring anyone for sensitive positions.

3: Background verification can bring up any past incidents that may hamper their ability to perform their job.

It is essential to know whether a candidate has had any criminal history. Sometimes, these can posit someone as being unsuitable for hiring, particularly in certain sensitive job positions. No employer wants someone with a DUI to be hired for a driver position. In the same sense, no employer wants someone with a bad credit history (i.e. financial unreliability) to be hired for a finance position.

These are the kind of things that people will generally not reveal by themselves. It is important to know all of this before choosing to hire someone for a role.

4: Have they actually had the education they claim to have?

Many people lie about the education they have had, since there is a premium on individuals from top-tier institutions. Without background verification, there is no way to know whether that degree from Stanford is actually real, or has been fabricated.

5: It tells you how honest a person is.

By verifying a candidate’s profile, it is possible to tell how honest that individual is. If there are discrepancies in what is reported by the candidate and what is found by the verification agency, you will know that the person has lied.

If there is one thing that anyone doesn’t want in their company, is a person who cannot be trusted.

So, what’s the problem?

Background verification costs time and money. Every time a new hire is made, a background check needs to be done. Every time a person joins a new company, a fresh background check needs to be done.

This is incredibly redundant, expensive and time-consuming. Big companies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on just background checks.

How blockchain can help

Everything written on to a blockchain is tamper-proof. Once something is written on blockchain, it cannot be removed, altered, or otherwise tampered with — even by the person who posted it.

This nature of blockchain makes it an attractive solution to the problem of redundant background checks. In the blockchain scenario, once a background verification is done, it will be attested on to the blockchain, and it is not possible to be tampered with.

This means that verification will have to be done once, and can be reliably referred to again and again without any additional cost of time or money. This has the potential to completely disrupt the hiring industry, saving millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours for companies every year.

The post Is Background Verification Really Required? appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

Is it really required to have 12 background checks done on the same person throughout her/his career? Can we not have a central database where any new employer could go and have a look to check the authenticity of the employee?

Why do we need a central database, anyway?

For one, doing background verification on the same person every single time she/he changes a job makes no sense. There is only one change, in most cases, of employment during a job change.

The education history usually doesn’t change except for any additional certification taken. The employment history has changed by 1 (the last employment). The address may have changed, which could easily be verified through an address document. And, the identity, well, is the same.

Once a person is verified, let’s say, with all the checks confirmed as accurate; the only check the next employer has to make is the previous work experience.

Yes, we are considering an ideal scenario here, but the difference in any other case is not a massive deviation from this. There could be an additional change in address or addition of education.

These are checks which could very easily be done on top of a complete background check done in the past.

Is it required then to have a complete background check on an employee every time?

How hard could it be to have a central database?

It turns out that it is really tough to build a central database. There are multiple reasons for this.

1. Companies who have had the background checks done on an employee don’t want to share the data. Why? Several reasons again! It could be due to their policy, or because they spent the money doing the checks and take the data to be of great value. More on this later in the post.

2. Any database where we could save the data could be compromised in a later time if the system is vulnerable. Which most systems are, give or take.

3. And, finally, a central database could make the power fall into the hands of people handling the database. Which brings us back to the problem of the authenticity of the data.

How could companies think differently?

To understand how big of a shift it is to have a central database, we need to understand the current flow of any background check.

When an employee joins any company, there is a request raised to do a background check on the employee. The standard checks which go into the process are identity check, education check (something we think is totally unnecessary, more on this later), employment check and address check.

All of these checks take time, except the identity check which could be done instantly, thanks to SpringVerify. The time taken can range from anywhere between a few weeks to a few months.

This is the time which the company loses money on. The cost of background checks apart, there are costs of keeping the employee on-board. The additional costs in having some of the educational checks run, which by the way are entirely flowed, is also taken by the company. The costs of verifying any alumni by the HR in terms of time is on top of this.

These are costs every company has to take for every employee on-boarded. If there was a central database, these costs could be saved. The verification could very well be done once, and the companies could pay a fraction of the amount of actual verification to know if the employee they are hiring is trustworthy.

The Way Things Could Be Better

The background checks, once done, could be saved for future use, if the companies allow that is, for any other company to use for their prospective hires.

There could be systems built which could save the data with a guarantee of keeping the data immutable and safe for future use. We at SpringRole use Blockchain to protect profile data, which inherently could not be changed in a later time.

Consider the benefits this could have on the entire hiring industry as a whole.

– This would help in saving money, a lot of it, in background checks and time wasted verifying these checks.

– It would promote inherently a sense of maintaining a legitimate profile by the candidates as this becomes a norm.

– Over time the process will make sure that the verification process becomes an industry standard, and the candidate would get it done by trusted authorities on their own. And, the employer would have to refer a database to verify.

The Future

We believe the future is moving towards the internet of value. Where it would be imperative to have an authenticity to anything produced. Blockchain is one of the stepping stones to this revolution.

The definition of work will change, and the way companies work with people will be re-imagined. People will work with more people, and there would be a greater need for authenticity and trust.

About SpringRole

SpringRole is enabling everyone’s #VerifiedProfessionalProfile on the Blockchain. It is a decentralized attestation-based professional network platform powered by the blockchain.

SpringRole is the platform where people can view, share, and get attestations on their professional profile, thereby creating a verified resume that they can share and use. The organizations themselves verify a user’s educational qualifications and work experience, which is written directly to the blockchain. To assess a user’s skill set, SpringRole has a system of weighted endorsements that let users objectively look at people’s profiles and evaluate their skill level.

Learn More

To learn more, and be up-to-date about all-things-SpringRole:

• Create your #VerifiedProfessionalProfile on the Blockchain
• Visit our Website
• Join the conversation on Telegram
• Follow us on Twitter
• Read more posts from our Blog
• Want to work with us? Check out open roles at SpringRole

The post Is It Really Required To Do Background Checks Every Single Time I Change A Job? appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

Whether you’re hiring for gig economy jobs or you’re a traditional business that tends to work multiple gigs, you need an approach to background checks that work in both cases.

The gig economy in numbers!

So first, here are some astonishing numbers that can set the stage for the current state.

– In 2018, around a Billion hours per week of freelancing, a Billion with a ‘B,’ was clocked by US freelancers alone. That too on a single platform, Upwork. The same findings say that these freelancers were 19 points more politically active than an average non-freelancer. How this could help is beyond me, but here it is.

– Let’s try another one. More than $1.4 Trillion was the collective annual earnings of gig workers in America. The study also pointed out that as much as 55% of gig workers also have a full-time job, which makes up roughly 60% of their income. Hmm!

– And, if the gig economy keeps growing at a rate of three times faster than the overall US workforce growth, almost 50% of the Americans will be involved in the gig economy by 2027.

UK’s gig economy doubled in size between 2016 and 2019 to now 4.7 Million workers. Yeah, not that great of a number, but a number nonetheless.

The genius, I think, is in the word ‘gig economy’ itself than just the numbers. All credit to Tina, because a recent article in The New York Times begs to differ. It pointed out that a new California Bill makes App-Based companies treat workers as employees.

This means some of the biggest employers of gig workers like Lyft and Uber will now have to provide social security and medicare, making Uber drivers not so much of a gig worker anymore in California. Essentially the gig workers would be employees.

This is The New York Times argument for an economy steering away from the gig economy. I somehow expected more from them. But, a point to keep in mind.

“It will have major reverberations around the country,” – David Weil

Most other states will follow suit is what is expected.

“Today, the so-called gig companies present themselves as the innovative future of tomorrow, a future where companies don’t pay Social Security or Medicare. Let’s be clear: there is nothing innovative about underpaying someone for their labor.” – Maria Elena Durazo

This is something which could very well be the case all over the world. Or not!

The conditions of people working in the gig economy certainly need to improve, and this bill will bring changes to the working conditions of people. But, and it’s a big but, the gig economy is here to stay. 

The inevitability of the gig economy

The gig economy is an inevitability contrary to what The New York Times would have us believe. The numbers are a testament to it. And ultimately, the numbers don’t lie.

What would our future look like when more people work as gig workers and less work as full-time or part-time workers?

A good question, this, has most economists, behavioral scientists, and corporations scratching their heads for an answer.

There are different scenarios portrayed, and out of which, the one I like the most is the one that looks at the future as a pool of human effort that could be tapped into as and when required.

More like cloud computing as a service out there. People would be available in the open market with skill sets and experiences and with different compensations hired at a moment’s notice.

Well, a moment’s notice could be a utopia, but something close enough. Where we could ask a data scientist to come in and work on the big data, build models, and derive useful insights from it. And once the job is done, we’d pay the engineer, and she’d be off to another project for some other firm.

And by the way, this could happen remotely or at your office. Which pretty much opens the whole world to employ someone from. Similarly, it opens up the world as a whole for the gig worker to find a gig from.

So, back to the utopia model, I guess there would be enormous challenges the world of employment, in general, will face.

Challenge one

It would be a massive headache to keep a project completely staffed with people coming in and moving out more frequently than it happens right now. 

There would be a similar problem for the gig workers in finding jobs and making sure they have another company to work for once a gig is finished. Of course, there are different forms of gigs out there, but you get the problem.

Challenge two

The authenticity of workers and employers will remain a huge problem, as is now. In an employment marketplace, the only way to find out if you want to work for a company or not is derived from a minimal set of credentials available online. These credentials could be designed and influenced, and targeted to attract talent. And, sometimes it is not the true depiction of a company or an organization.

Similarly, if a company has to hire anyone on a contract or for a gig, the available information is not always the entire picture. There are so many facets to a potential candidate above and beyond the resume or the online profile.

The requirement of verified credentials (both for the company and for the gig worker)

Verified credentials or profiles of potential gig workers and companies will become an essential requirement. There would be better measures and systems which would help people understand and make a decision.

It will talk way more than just the education or the experience or the project one has worked on. And it will speak way more than what the company produces, or how many people it employs, or how much the company pays.

What exactly would evolve to become a potential perfect profile? We don’t know, and maybe we would never be able to. But, one thing which has pushed the current market to build is an authenticity to any limited credentials available online.

We at Springworks built one such profile building platform, SpringRole. It has the profiles written to the blockchain and has valid references and credential checks available against an incentive to make for as authentic a profile as possible.

Also, we have a background checks wing called SpringVerify, which confirms, with certainty, the available necessary credentials of employees and workers.

Combining the two has worked wonders for the hiring teams of our clients. And we feel that these services combined will help build a platform that will contribute towards the vision we are talking about.

Yes, it is not perfect, and maybe it will never be. But it is by far the best way to help build a platform where one could have genuine profiles of people.

The requirement of a super-employment solution (Again, both for the company and the gig worker)

HR would be the people who would be most affected by the rapidly changing trend in the employment sector. The requirement of skilled people for projects would change dramatically, and the hiring team would require to keep up with the pace.

This would give rise to hiring platforms that would have skilled gig workers to pounce on a project. Think of it more like Uber for data scientists, if you may, or Lyft.

Hiring people for projects needs to get as simple as finding a cab home from a really awesome and partly remembered Saturday night party. 

Teams should be able to tap into the ‘human-effort-pool’ if you will, when their chief data scientist had a meltdown and went for a soul searching expedition to the Amazon Rain Forest to experience the spirit molecule.

You get the idea. It is going to be tough for talent management staff. And God only knows what would unravel when your Chief of staff thinks that enough is enough and finds solace in minimalism.

It is slated to get pretty rough out there in the future. And yeah, this also means that the company will have greater flexibility in up-scaling or down-scaling the human effort required for a project.

So, in conclusion, the gig economy is the future, and The New York Times just messed up. This time!

FAQs

Doing background verification yourself is complicated and time-consuming. Try our employee background verification platform, Springverify – where employee verifications happen seamlessly and with minimal effort required from both the company.

Last updated on May 19 2021

The post The Need for Background Verification In a Gig Economy appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

In 2007, MIT Dean of Admissions, Marilee Jones, stepped down from her post after she was found to have misrepresented her academic degrees to the institute.

Jones had started her career at MIT as an entry-level employee that didn’t require a college degree, so no one verified her credentials. The mistake subsequently led to the institute promoting her to the position of Dean of Admissions in 1997.

She claimed to have received degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Union College, and Albany Medical College. After an investigation a decade later, MIT confirmed that Jones has not graduated from these schools.

It was indeed an unfortunate incident for America’s most prestigious school. But the action was swift. After all, the integrity of the organization was at stake.

With scandals like this combined with a growing concern about student safety in the education industry, it is evident that they need to ensure that their employees are adequately screened.

This blog post will discuss four reasons for performing a pre-employment screening in the education industry. 

Why Background Verification In Education Industry

1. Student Safety

Comprehensive background checks are an integral part of educational institutes because the safety and welfare of the students are of utmost importance. Incidents of inappropriate or questionable staff and academicians can lead to a widespread negative impact on the institute. 

As schools, colleges and universities are built on the reputation of their staff, the credentials of the staff are of primary consideration when it comes to attracting prospective students. 

2. Education Quality

The quality of education imparted depends on how knowledgeable and well-equipped the teachers are. Validating credential is an essential step in making sound decisions for hiring educators. A thorough background check provides detailed information about employing individuals with the appropriate training and certification required. This is a must for schools, universities, and any educational institute.

 3. Staffing Woes

Each year, 15% of teachers quit because they find another job, retire, or leave the profession altogether. That means research institutes need to hire a new fleet of teachers to replace the ones that go. However, that also allows them to increase the quality of the teaching staff.

Conducting an education background verification on potential candidates will help you find out if they have the required degree or licenses to do their job. It makes the hiring process transparent for the employer and the job applicant in the education industry.

4. Financial Issues

Educational institutes are legally bound to do certain background verifications on teachers, admin personnel, janitorial staff. Failing to perform the task can put the management in a tight spot. Either the organization is losing its funding, or some of the staff is getting fired from their jobs.

Staying Legally Compliant

Most background checks screen past employment and education credentials, teaching licenses, and criminal records. As an employer, they can ask for specific documents or run additional tests if necessary, depending on location and the type of the institute.

Due to the sensitive information involved in background verification, they are regulated by federal and state laws.

In 2015, Target came under the scanner when its criminal background verification process was racially discriminatory. The retail giant was asked to pay a fine of $2.8 million. Therefore, it is crucial to perform background verification within compliance.

Background verification provides the detailed information required for the educational industry to make sound decisions about job applicants in the education industry.

It is necessary to maintain the institute’s reputation. Incidents of violence, negative publicity, or assault can hamper future student enrollment, alumni, and parent donations. It is best to take your time before hiring than be sorry at a later stage.

 Use SpringVerify to run checks smoothly.

When reputed schools can make a mistake by not verifying the credentials, it only makes sense for others to take precautions when hiring new teaching staff.

You must make sure your background verification process is done within rights and doesn’t threaten or harm any potential staff. This is for the benefit of the students who are the future of the world.

Need help in running a background check? SpringVerify can help! Contact us today to learn more.

The article was last update

The post 4 Reasons to Perform Background Verification In Education Industry appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

A large proportion of the global population is struggling to get access to basic amenities because they have no identity. According to ID4D Global Dataset, there are an estimated 1 billion people around the world without a valid identity. This crisis needs immediate attention.

Several innovative technologies are leading the world economy into digital transformation. One of the most emerging technology trends is in the field of digital identity. The Identification for Development (ID4D) is an initiative by the World Bank that aims to help countries realize the transformational potential of the digital identification system. 

With the use of the right technology, the identification system can be integrated into the domains of finance, governance, healthcare, and social protection. It will enable people to access services and exercise their rights easily with their digital identity. 

The ID4D initiative aims to provide legal identity to every existing being in this world by 2030.

The Impact of Digital ID on Economy

Countries around the world are making efforts to get an efficient system in place for their citizens. 

The United States of America already has a system called the social security number in effect. It is a nine-digit number that keeps track of an individual’s earnings and years of employment through this number. 

This number can be used for opening accounts with financial institutions, applying for federal loans, applying for any public assistance such as unemployment benefits, enrolling for any medicare or Medicaid services, applying for a passport or driver’s license, and filing taxes.

Sweden’s BankID system, developed by several large banks, has gained recognition from the Swedish government as well. This BankID can be used as proof of identification as well as for signing documents and transactions. 

The signature made with BankID is legally binding within the European Union according to the Swedish Law.

Argentina also launched its digital identification system in 2018. They have integrated biometric authentication with facial recognition. The validation of facial recognition can be done through any device with a camera and is valid across both public and private sector services. The government is taking steps to integrate this system into the health and banking sectors soon.

E-Identity for Citizens

Surprisingly, 98% of the Estonian population has an e-identity. Apart from being a legally valid identity proof, the e-identity provides digital access to all secure e-services. It can be used as a legal travel ID by the citizens within the European Union and serves as a national health insurance card. 

It can be used for i-voting, filing taxes, banking, digital signatures, and medical records. This chip-based card has made Estonia a country with one of the world’s most advanced digital signature systems.

India has its own digital identification system called Aadhar. Launched in 2009, it is used as a proof of identification and for e-KYC. It can be used to receive government benefits like subsidies directly to your bank accounts. 

With the Digilocker facility attached to every Aadhar number, it enables a person to store his/her documents and signatures in the digital form, making it easy to store and access documents. 

China has also vaulted into the digital economy by issuing national ID cards featuring encryption and chips. These contain personal information details like sex, ethnicity, date of birth, identification number, photograph, and residential address. 

This ID is valid for passport and driving license applications. It can also be used for opening bank accounts. Since the project is in its inception period, these virtual IDs are currently valid at certain select government departments. 

China is also striving to build a facial recognition database that will enable immediate identification of its citizens.

Conclusion

While digital identification will fix many problems, it will be vulnerable to cyber intrusions and frauds due to the presence of the information of all citizens at a single place. 

If the system is not well guarded or its privacy provisioning is not thorough, it could bring down the infrastructure and economy of a nation. Therefore, a thoughtful and secure digital identification system should be built to mitigate these risks.

The post Digital Identity Systems Around the World appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

The fact that a resume forms the base of any individual’s candidature is known to both the employees and the job applicant. Therefore, the applicant tries his level best to showcase all the best things that he has got on a single page.

However, this might push the candidate to include some fancy pieces of information that are not true. This will lead to a false representation of facts, and will turn out to be misleading for HR and the organization.

Misrepresentation of facts is quite common among people. They make their profiles likable and more employable by adding points or experiences that never existed in the first place. This brings in the need for resume verification.

What Is Resume Verification?

Resume verification is the process by which the factual checking of pointers on a CV is done. Forged resumes are not very common; however, an individual might misrepresent a couple of pointers on his resume to improve his chances of getting hired. It is crucial to conduct a resume check before onboarding an employee.

Employing someone is a long-term commitment for a company, and a company cannot afford to hire someone who has created a fraudulent resume to express his interest in the profile.

Resume Background Check

A lot of companies prefer hiring candidates with prior working experience. Some candidates might lie on their resume about working with another company to be considered for the profile. Background check of resume is a vital part of the resume verification process.

You can verify if a particular experience is genuine or not by contacting the HR of that organization. He or she will confirm if the employee was working with the organization. They will also give feedback to the candidate. This feedback can include both positive as well as negative points about the candidate.

What Points do you need to consider during curriculum vitae verification?

Resume verification can be a cumbersome as well as a complicated process. However, it is crucial to verify the CVs, as you can’t afford to hire someone who is lying about his own life on his CV. You can consider the following things during a CV verification process:

1. Verification of Education

The process of resume verification begins with the checking of the academic qualifications of the candidate. Here, there is no need to call educational institutes like colleges, schools, etc. You can ask the candidate to furnish their original transcripts and mark sheets. As an HR, you can use the ats resume checker to check if the documents are authentic.

2. Employment Verification

One of the primary reasons for conducting resume verification is to check if the employee has represented facts about his professional experience. Most employees lie about their employment to improve their chances of getting hired. A background check can help you with this. You can get in touch with the organization to verify the details about the role, salary, reason for resignation, etc.

3. Identity Verification

Identity proofs form a very important part of the background screening. You can ask the candidate to furnish the necessary identity proofs to authenticate the identity of the candidate. You can also use the features available on a CV checker to verify these documents. It is essential to check if the candidate belongs to the country and is an authorized citizen.

4. Reference Verification

Job seekers tend to furnish false references and letters of recommendation. It would be best if you made it a mandate to verify these documents as well. These documents act strongly and support the candidature of the job seeker. Therefore, it is important to check if the letters are genuine or not. You can contact the referee and ask them about the letters. You can also ask general questions about the candidate from the referee.

5. Address Verification

Address verification is an integral part of the employment verification process. It gives clarity on the citizenship of the candidate.

Do Employers Verify Resume?

Yes, most employers verify resumes as they are hiring a long-term resource for the company. However, the recruiter doesn’t need to verify all the details on the resume. For instance, if you have worked for multiple companies, the recruiter might choose to contact only your last employer. There is no fixed pattern of verifying a resume, but the process is vital.

Conduct an Efficient Resume Verification

The main aim of HR is to find the right person for a given profile. Therefore, checking the candidate’s profile is essential. There are several CV verification platforms available online. You can pick one that meets all your requirements. You can use the selected platform to conduct a hassle-free verification process and get the right person on board.

The post Resume Verification: The Importance of Verifying a Resume appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

Conducting employment verifications as part of the overall employment background check is one step you can take to ensure the applicant is qualified for the desired position within your organization.

In this guide, we’ll talk about:

• What is employment verification?
• Importance of employment verification
• How to verify a candidate’s work history
• How much time does it take?

Let’s get started:

What is employment verification?

Employment verification is the process to confirm a person’s past or current job status. It ensures the candidate has the relevant experience to perform the intended job well. Employment verification can also reveal false claims, gaps in employment, or fabrication of job titles. 

The company connects with previous employers to confirm a candidate’s information: job titles, tenure, and reasons for leaving / termination (if applicable).

It’s an important part of the pre-employment screening process because it reveals if your candidates are trustworthy and a good fit for the job. 

The Importance of employment verification

There are many ways that candidates can commit resume fraud when applying for jobs: lying about their experience, licenses, or education, exaggerating duties or management experience, or even omitting details such as their reason for leaving a previous job. The only surefire way to protect your business from fraud is to verify the candidate’s education and employment history. 

Wondering if you need to implement pre-employment screening at your organization? Here are some factors:

You hire people who are put in positions of trust 

Employees with access to money, financial records, or secure databases can cause huge problems if they don’t turn out to be trustworthy. It’s not just the direct consequences of any negative employee actions (such as theft, or putting the organization at risk of legal action) that an organization may suffer from, but also the long-term ripples that come from a disrupted work environment, expensive lawsuits, loss of workforce and, ultimately, the effect on profits.

Bad hires have cost you in the past 

We all make mistakes and most employers will, at some point, make a hire that they regret. In fact, according to CareerBuilder, 75% of employers said they have hired the wrong person for a position. These kinds of mistakes are avoidable, and shouldn’t be repeated. Pre-employment screening companies have the experience and expertise to reduce mistakes and improve the effectiveness of your hiring process.

Your employee turnover is high

Effective employment screening can go a long way toward reducing employee turnover. The process has been shown to reduce employee terminations due to theft, violence, and illicit drug use, and ensure better alignment between the values of new employees coming in and those of the organization. 

If you find employees coming in and leaving on too regular a basis, consider bringing in an expert company to help you make the right decision the first time.

You have trouble finding accurate information on applicants 

This is the hardest part. The truth is, there are no singular databases to search. Any background database is an aggregate of many different databases and none of them are all-inclusive. These databases also become quickly outdated or inaccurate as activities go unreported.

Confirming the events and locations listed on a resume can be time-consuming for busy employers, so it’s best to leave this process to a background screening company.

Employment verification statistics that you need to know

Good employment verification has one goal: making an organization more successful. Here are some eye-opening statistics:

The #1 reason for conducting background checks is to avoid job fraud. (Source)

84% of employers continue to derive significant benefits from employment verifications. (Source)

53% of applications or resumes submitted by candidates to hiring managers contain at least one inaccuracy or lie. (Source)

 An organization can lose $17,000 on average, says CareerBuilder, for a wrong hire or hiring someone with a false degree. (Source)

An AuthBridge report revealed that one in every six candidates lie on their resumes. (Source)

72% of employers use social media to screen candidates during the hiring process.

In a survey conducted by HR.com, 96% of employers surveyed conduct some type of background screening.

How to verify a candidate’s previous employment?

There are many ways that candidates can commit resume fraud when applying for jobs: lying about their experience, licenses, or education, exaggerating duties or management experience, or even omitting details such as their reason for leaving a previous job.

So the question is: how can you verify a candidate’s previous employment?

An employment background check typically includes the candidate’s work history, educational qualifications, driving record, medical history, and criminal record. 

• The candidate has to be notified in writing about the background check. This document is separate from the employment application. 
• The applicant must provide written consent for the background check. 
• If the pre-employment check is compulsory for hiring, the business must state it clearly in their written policies. 
• The employee has the right to be notified about checks being conducted about their reputation, lifestyle, history, or character.

Reference check is also a tried and true technique for screening job candidates. What better way to determine if the candidate is a good fit than to speak with a former colleague or manager? 

It enables employers to speak with former supervisors to reveal candidates’ strengths, weaknesses, and overall performance.

What information can previous employers share about a candidate?

As an employer, you only request information that you are legally authorized to use during the hiring process based on your country’s specific laws.

Information from the past employer is crucial for employment verification by a potential employer. While there are no existing central rules or laws that govern the kind of information shared by a past employer, several states have their particular set of guidelines. These must be looked up before releasing any information about the candidate. 

Mentioned below are some of the standard examples of what past employers can share for employment verification:

• Performance of the candidate
• Reason for leaving the previous organization
• The job description, daily responsibilities, and skills of their last role
• Duration of employment tenure
• Details of wages and remuneration package
• Any actions against the employee
• The overall code of conduct in the organization
• Any other work-related information that may aid the hiring decision

If you’re an employer, make sure to abide by the rules for sharing candidate’s Information as specified by your state. On the other hand, if you’re a potential employer, request legally authorized Information only, which might aid in the hiring process. 

An intelligent way to stop overstepping the law regarding candidate’s Information is to tie up with hiring legal counsel. The expert agency is familiar with the details and can help you secure vital information for better decision-making without crossing the lines.

How long does employment verification take?

There are two ways to conduct employment verification of a candidate. You can either hand over the task to the internal team in your organization. This could be your human resource department. However, the time required to complete this task might be more significant in this case and depend upon the following factors-

• The number of applicants shortlisted for background check
• Number of HR members working on the task
• The number of roles for which verification has to take place
• The ease of obtaining information from the previous job
• Past employer’s response and willingness to provide the Information

Another way to verify a candidate’s employment history is to hire a background check company. They are professional organizations that help you complete the employment verifications of candidates in the minimum amount of time. While it might take weeks to complete the background check on your own, it also delays the job hiring process and causes unwanted issues. 

Moreover, the candidates might find another opportunity due to the slow and tiresome hiring process at your end. On the other hand, a background check company enables you to hire the best talent within 2-3 days, making the task hassle-free.

Does background verification help get the right candidate?

There have been innumerable incidents where organizations faced financial and reputational loss because its employees. Employers don’t follow the process of getting to know their employees well has been the problem in many such cases. 

In a utopian world, it might be normal to take the word of a job aspirant based on the resume alone. But the real world works differently, doesn’t it?

Organizations need to be open with their candidates about the background verification exercise that is being done. Taking consent from the candidate for the verification can avert a lot of risks, both financially and reputation-wise, for the organization.

If a company takes the consent of the employee and handles the data with responsibility, then employment will reap you a long-term return as well as for averting any immediate ‘faux pas.’ 

A wrong hire will not treat your customers the way they are supposed to be treated. This kind of behavior from an employee will reflect poorly on your business. It could also completely lower the morale of the other employees who will take a share of the blame as well. 

In short, candidate verification is one of the most effective tools that you should use to build the right ‘infrastructure’ of employees.

FAQs

Download Free eBook: The Complete Guid

The post The Complete Guide to Employment Verification [2026] appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

According to the PBSA, almost 93% of employers include national criminal database searches in their background screenings. But that doesn’t suffice!

It is crucial to perform a pre-employment reference check that includes contacting the applicant’s references to uphold their educational background, employment history, and other necessary information vital to the offered position.

If you still feel that an in-depth employment reference check simply fritters away time, we have rounded up some fundamental reasons to convince you otherwise.

5 top reasons to perform employment reference checks in the selection process

1. Employees’ and customers’ protection

A PBSA survey in 2020 indicated that 83% of employees considered reference verification primarily for the safety of the organization’s employees and customers.

Consider this example, for instance. The long and short of the case is that The Kirby Company hired an applicant without conducting a proper professional reference check (explicitly pointed out during the hearing). Later, in 2013, the company’s female employees filed a lawsuit against the same employee in court for sexual assault and verbal abuse.

Thus, overlooking one aspect in hiring can affect the safety quotient of the entire organization.

2. Know your applicant

References help transcend the employment verification and know the candidate’s working style, performance, strengths, qualifications, and more from another experienced manager to better judge if they are the right fit for your organization.

This approach helps you assess the applicant’s potential and, in turn, increase the quality of new hires.

3. Prevent negligent hiring lawsuit

As the name suggests, negligent hiring refers to the employer’s failure to investigate an employee before hiring. In which case, the employers are liable for the things they know and should have known about the employee. 

The courts have repeatedly emphasized the employer’s duty for careful hiring, especially in the workplace that poses a threat to the public.

This classic case, in which the jury passed the $1,000,000 in favor of the injured party, stands as an example and reiterates why the reference check process is indispensable. Moreover, running these checks works in your favor in such cases.

4. Avoid losses

You may feel that you are shelling out money for nothing during background checks, but it is quite the contrary.

Whether it’s the case of negligent hiring lawsuits or hiring the wrong person, you will be losing plenty in comparison to following due diligence with our reference checking service help. Moreover, it will also ensure a positive work environment, thus boosting the morale of all.

5. Avoid bad publicity

P.T. Barnum, a showman, and politician said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” This doesn’t stand true in a corporate culture!

Bad incidents can have a lasting impact on an organization. Your employees are going to be your company’s face. Hence, hire the ones that you find worthy of your brand.

What should employers know before conducting reference checks?

A CBS News report says that the big organizations and reference check companies have spent over $325 million in the last decade to settle background checks-related litigation. Thus, it is essential to understand your obligations.

It is required by the law for an employer to obtain the applicant’s permission before conducting the reference check, whether it is to examine credit reports or talk to a third party.

Additionally, an employer mustn’t discriminate against the candidate based on his/her race, color, disability, national origin, sex, religion, genetic information, and age.

At SpringWorks, we have developed an online reference checking service named SpringVerify that removes the hassle from the process and makes it a breeze. It gives you a complete report on the applicant by merely adding his or her basic information, which takes less than a minute.

As expected from excellent reference check software, SpringVerify is:

• Straightforward
  The software is super intuitive and can start the verification process in a couple of steps.
• Transparent
  The software is secured by Blockchain technology that ensures your shared data is secured, always!
• Blazing fast
  SpringVerify performs the check 30% faster than other competitors.

Are you ready to dig into those reference checks and take your organization to the next level with better hires?

The post 5 Reasons Why Employment Reference Check is Important appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.

We believe that’s a substantial reason to understand the importance of education verification and its best practices.

Let’s get started.

Recommended Post: Resume Verification: A Must in Your Hiring Process

What Is An Educational Background Check?

A lucrative job offering may attract the eyeballs of thousands of prospects. While some are deserving, others can make up a few sections of their resume to fit in. Background checks help employers verify the training, certifications, and academic history of the candidates. That way, they can identify any discrepancies in the candidature and take necessary action on it. 

To assist employers, consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) perform background checks and education verification. They find out if the applicant has earned his/her high school diplomas, vocational certifications, or undergraduate/graduate degrees.

Hence, if any applicant is inflating their qualifications to get hired, you will come to know. As a result, it will help filter out resume fraud and focus on hiring the right talent.

Now the two important points to note are:

1. As far as education verification is concerned, there is no restriction, according to the federal FCRA guidelines. That means consumer reporting agencies can check the educational claims across the applicant’s entire lifetime.

2. The duration of verifying the educational background of a candidate is dependent on the method you choose. For instance, if you perform it yourself, it might take a lot of time. You will have to contact every institution the applicant claimed to have attended and then wait for their responses, which might take weeks. Also, you may miss out on any information in some cases. For example, if the applicant has failed to include a particular institution in his or her CV. 

To make your task easy, consumer reporting agencies are there. If you hire us, we have 

state-of-the-art technology to complete background checks in less time and deliver a remarkable user experience.

Why Should You Perform Background Check While Recruiting?

Applicants need to have a degree to be considered for any entry-level job. To gain ground over others, some applicants may embellish their qualifications and end up securing the job. Since educational background gives employers an insight into the abilities, skills, and knowledge level of an applicant, fake details can cloud the employer’s judgment of the individual candidate. As a result, the firm may hire unqualified employees, which may hurt business and reputation.

By conducting the education verification process, you get the following advantages:

• No unworthy hiring by shortlisting qualified candidates
• Able to save resources on the hiring process
• Test of applicant’s character
• Able to gauge the mettle of candidates by analyzing the marks in relevant subjects

Hence, to avoid any costly situations for the organization, employers must perform an education verification for employment as part of a background check to identify qualified, able, and trustworthy talent. 

What Does An Education Background Check Reveal?

In this background check, the educational claims made by an applicant are verified. This part of the education verification process includes verification of the school or universities attended, the period of the academics as mentioned by the applicant, and degrees (Bachelor’s or Master’s) earned. While these are some basic verifications, agencies can further verify any top honors, areas of study, and GPA, if needed.

What Are The Best Practices From A Legal Perspective?

While employers can find themselves in the middle of an ocean while performing a thorough background check, it is right to hire a CRA. 

Now the CRAs must adhere to all federal regulations and local laws while carrying out their job to help employers make correct hiring decisions. The Federal Trade Commission enforces the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act). The law lists down the requirements that employers must be aware of. 

Some of the notable points under FCRA are:

• Written disclosure: Employers must notify applicants that they will conduct background checks
• Consent: Before conducting background checks through CRAs, employers must obtain each applicant’s consent.
• Sharing results: After a certified FCRA-compliant CRA completes the background check, the employer must share the results with the applicant and inform them about their rights under FCRA.
• Follow the adverse-action process: If the employer receives any adverse information that can influence their hiring decisions, they must comply with the adverse-action process under the FCRA. For instance, if you find any discrepancy after the background check and decide not to hire the candidate, you must send a final adverse action notice to the candidate or employee.

In addition to this, employers must also know the regulations enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or EEOC:

• Anti-discrimination laws: EEOC enforces anti-discrimination laws.
• Treating everyone equally: Perform a background check consistently on every applicant irrespective of their race, origin, color, gender, and other ascribed characteristics.
• Follow local laws: Based on your hiring location, you must comply with the local laws. 

Final Thoughts

Following every guideline can be time-consuming and difficult for employers. Hence, it is advised to partner with a certified FCRA-compliant CRA to conduct education verification for employment. The results will be accurate and provide reliable information to help you make better hiring decisions.

The post Education Verification: Importance and Best Practices appeared first on SpringVerify Blog.