Data reveals top four false claims made by prospective employees
Sydney, Australia: Thursday 17 July 2014 – New data from leading analytics company Veda shows Australians are regularly providing misleading information about their previous employment, professional memberships and academic qualifications when changing jobs.
Clients of Veda’s Employment Verification service choose from a menu of checks to confirm new starters have the appropriate qualifications, licences, permits and background to perform their role. In particular industries, clients ask Employment Verification to check if employees have criminal records or are in financial distress.
Veda today released an analysis of adverse findings of verification of employees moving to new jobs over the past 12 months, to 30 June 2014. Of more than 1,000 adverse findings analysed, the top four categories of adverse findings were:
- Employment history – 27%
- Entitlement to work – 26%
- Professional memberships – 12%
- Claimed academic qualifications – 11%
Background checking expert Hosay Mangal, Head of Employment Verification, said recent high profile cases highlighted the consequences to employers by not having thorough due diligence and screening processes in place.
“Embellishment in resumes shouldn’t be the biggest worry for employers. It’s the actual falsification of employment history exposed by our checks that’s most concerning,” she said.
Ms Mangal said that referees can be easily faked and without a proper screening process, bad hires can be made.
“Going back to the job source and digging beyond referees to confirm a person’s role and performance needs to be conducted. Referees need to be confirmed with HR and payroll departments of previous employers as well, to ensure the referees themselves are not fictitious” she said.
“We understand the urgency and time pressures associated with on-boarding new staff, but the consequences of not checking staff have the proper qualifications exposes businesses to the risk of financial loss and reputational damage,” Ms Mangal said.
Ms Mangal said that Australian human resources and recruitment services are immature in their background checking processes compared with other parts of the world.
“There are still many organisations that do not have a proper background screening policy in place and are unaware of the shortcomings in their general hiring practices.
“Paper certified copies of identification have historically been the backbone of the human resource and recruitment industry. Yet very often those paper documents, purported to be valid identification documents, aren’t being checked against a reliable source or database to ensure they haven’t been falsified.
“Without checking against the data source to identify the person, there is a gap open for an employee to use false identification documents,” she said.
For more information on Employment Verification see http://www.veda.com.au/business/verification/verify