What You Need to Know About Educational Verification Checks

Every business wants the perfect candidate for the jobs that they offer. Candidates know this and often attempt to present falsified information to secure the jobs. This can easily lead to a loss for the business. One area where candidates lie a lot is about their academic records and achievements.

This article shall address background checks related to education and why they are important for employers. Before we move on to the importance of educational background checks and education verification, let’s understand what it is.

What is Educational Verification?

To simply help you understand, it means that you check whether the academic achievements presented by the candidates are right or not. There are a lot of tricks and tactics people use to get themselves hired.

For instance, they’d attend a workshop at IVY league and claim that they did a Master’s degree from there. You’d go on to their social media and see their profile picture in an IVY league hoodie, and you’d think that they are right.

However, that’s a mistake and can soon prove to you that you made a wrong hiring decision. Education verification is necessary to help you avoid making hiring blunders.

Here are a few benefits of running these checks over candidates that can become potential employees:

You hire better

As an employer, your hiring strategy would be to get the best people for the job, right? You’d not want to hire someone who lies about their education.

When you run the candidates through a check, you can testify whether the person truly is as qualified as they claim. That way you can know exactly who you’ll have work for you. This also brings you peace of mind!

You protect your workplace

Professionals say that it’s better to hire someone less experienced than someone who is dishonest to get a job. That’s because skills can be learned, trust is hard to regain.

When you run an education verification check, you can easily see if a person is truthful or not. Someone who is dishonest can cause harm to the business and the workplace.

You save resources

Hiring the wrong candidate can be a significant loss to the company. Plus, running hiring processes isn’t a cheap feat. A lot of time and resources go into it and it all goes to waste if you end up with someone that wasn’t the right fit.

Running an educational verification check helps you know exactly what resource you’ll get. That way, your chances of making bad hiring decisions reduce significantly, and you make the most of your invested resources.

You identify the red flags

When you figure out that a candidate was dishonest on their CV, you can easily look out for other red flags as well. Because frankly, if someone is lying about their academic achievements, they may be being dishonest about other elements too.

The responsibility then lies upon you to get the candidate screened before you hire them.

A lot of times, the competence of a candidate overshadows their lacking. So it may happen that a candidate is a right fit even though they lied. But that’s a choice for you to make; however, knowing the complete picture helps you make more informed decisions.

You can make better offers

If you find great candidates that are truly what they claim to be, then you can be more confident with hiring them. This means that you can make them better offers and plan a future with them. That’s a great thing because retaining great employees is a challenge that many companies and businesses face.

Getting to know exactly who you’ll hire helps you get the best talent for the job.

Final Words

Running educational verification checks is essential for employers. It helps them make informed decisions. Plus, the best thing is that it helps save time and resources that are wasted with bad hiring decisions.

The benefits of these checks are numerous. Plus, you don’t even need to spend millions to get the processes done. All you need to do is hire the right background checking company to do the task for you.

Using the right Background Checking company is more of an investment than an expense because they help you find the right assets for your business.

5 Different Types of Background Checks Employers Should Perform

Having your candidates interviewed before hiring is great. You get to have an idea of what they bring to the table. You ask them questions and try and analyse whether they are the right fit for the position you offer. But the process comes with several limitations.

As an employer, you need to ensure that whoever steps through the door of your office isn’t a risk. That means you need to be cautious with a lot more things than just superficially assessing the candidate’s competence.

A third-party background checker can offer great services in this regard. Why? Because there’s a limit to how much you can know about a person. What’s their life and character outside of the interview is crucial to assess. By having some checks, you can have an idea of the type of person you’ll hire.

Here’s a list of background checks that you must consider running on a candidate before finalising their hiring:

Criminal History Check

You’d want to see if someone has some criminal record or not. You do this to try and develop a safe workspace for everyone. There’s no point in hiring a highly competent employee but who could end up being a danger to the staff.

A criminal check helps you assess how much of a threat a person is. Oftentimes it may happen that a person has a criminal record many years ago but are now ready to be a normal part of the community.

If you want to help them have this chance, then sure, that’s up to you. But as an employer, you shouldn’t be in the dark about a candidate’s past activity and have all the necessary information that’ll help you make informed decisions.

Employment Verification

You’d want to see a candidate’s professional past records. A lot of times, people will lie on their resumes to hide something that’s not worth sharing. However, as an employer, you must know the kind of professional record a person holds.

You must know the type of performance a candidate has maintained in the past. If there’s any gap period or something suspicious, then that can be found via employment verification. You may question the candidate and ask them for the justification, but as an employer, you must know their work history.

This check may not be relevant for junior level or entry-level resources but can help a lot when filling up for senior and managers level posts.

Education Verification

A diploma from a prestigious university isn’t equivalent to a professional degree. A lot of candidates spice up their educational achievements to make their CVs shiny and pompous. For instance, they’d attend a 6-week workshop in Harvard and mention it as something else.

As an employer, you must know the right educational achievements of your candidates. That way you can better assess who deserves the job. Those who lie about their educational records might pretend to be something that they are not.

That way, they can easily prove to be an incompetent resource and become a liability for your business than an asset.

Social Media Check

You must try and understand the personality of the person who’s likely to become your candidate. Doing a quick scan through their social media can help you understand their likes and dislikes. Some people may argue what does it matter what a person does in their personal life.

However, remember, the same rules and principles that a person applies to their lives shall come to your workplace. Seeing their interests can help you understand who you are hiring. For instance, if a person has shared a lot of drug-related posts, then you may need to observe caution while hiring them.

Or if they regularly enjoy dark humour, then that’s a red flag you need to factor in before hiring them.

Final Words

Employee background checks are an essential tool that helps employers make better candidate choices. While it is true that people shouldn’t always be judged based on their past, knowing their tendencies can help you have a better idea of who they are.

If you are an employer looking for Employment screening services in the UK, then contact us. We’ll help you with different background checks and help you refine your hiring process.

6 Things to Know About Employment Background Checks in the UK

Background checks are becoming an increasing necessity for employers. There are numerous benefits to this, and employers are increasingly recognizing the utility it brings. However, there are many misconceptions about background checks. For instance, some people think that background checking companies can hack into electronic devices to get information.

That’s false. There are several rules and restrictions that background checking companies have to follow. All that’s done is within the bounds of GDPR. This article shall communicate six things about background checks in the UK that everyone should know:

Some industries have made background checks mandatory

While these checks are an employer’s preference, some industries are making them mandatory. For instance, the security industry or the financial industry.

Primarily because these are sensitive industries, and getting resources without knowing their background can result in severe losses.

GDPR rules are laid out about storing employee data

Employers get a lot of applications, and they have to store the data for business use. The GDPR guidelines have been stated, which inks out the terms about how the data can be used. Here are the points to help you understand the rules better:

  • The company or business that stores the data is liable to protect it against any theft or data breach.
  • The data can’t be stored without the candidate’s consent.
  • The data can be requested by the candidate.
  • The employer must have a legit reason to store the information.

A security check cannot be requested for individuals that’d like to have the data for personal use

According to the law, security checks can only be requested by employers. This is

because they’d like to figure out who they are hiring and prevent making wrong hiring decisions. However, this information cannot be requested for personal interests as it can be used for unethical purposes.

Individuals may have personal grudges with other people. If this rule wasn’t in place then people in power could easily abuse their position to cause harm to someone. While it makes complete sense for businesses to ensure that they don’t hire a wrong resource, it doesn’t make much sense to allow security checks for individual gains.

The costs of background checks vary depending upon their type

Not all background checks are the same. And not all of them are done for the same purposes. There are instances where superficial checks would do just fine. On the contrary, there are other scenarios where an in-depth check is required to see if the person is the right match for the job or not.

So the costs of an employee background check really depend upon what type of check the employer signs up for.

Employers outsource background checks to third parties

It’s a common practice for businesses to outsource background checking processes to professionals. This practice is common because most businesses don’t have the resources to set up a dedicated department for this purpose.

Plus, many small to medium-sized businesses don’t hire that often that they’d need a dedicated department. Hiring the right service is an easy process that gets the task done quickly and the business doesn’t even have to spend a lot of money for it.

Employers can know what value a potential candidate can bring

Background checks don’t just let the employer know about a candidate’s qualifications. The check can also extract out the performance reports of an employee. That way, the employer can know better who they are hiring.

Every business needs the right resource for them to function well. However, it’s not just the skills or competence that matter. What soft skills, ethics, and morals a person must also be thoroughly considered. Because it isn’t always the best talent that pushes companies towards progress.

By conducting multiple checks on a candidate, you can better understand what they bring to your organisation. That’s a great way for hunting gem employees.

Final Words

Background checks for employment help employers understand their potential staff better. By conducting such checks, they can make the workplace safe and productive.

There are several misconceptions about the field. We hope that the above-mentioned points paint a better picture of background checks for you.

Getting your candidates through background checks is a great way to ensure safety and efficiency. Remember, a little incompetent candidate is a better option compared to someone with great talent but who is also a potential murderer.

By running checks, you have a better position in making the right hiring choice.

To know more about background checking or to hire our services, give us a call right away!