Employment Verification

What is one thing every business must do while onboarding new employees? Make sure that the potential hire is trustworthy by carrying out background checks. These checks determine that the person willing to join the company does not have a shady character with criminal records, or another individual with outstanding taxes or associations with potentially questionable entities. In this regard, employment verification has the solution to address all these concerns, ultimately promoting a safer workplace culture.   

What is an Employment Verification?

Verification of Employment (VoE), also known as Employment Verification, is the process of confirming an employee’s eligibility and legitimacy through background checks. These procedures take into account an individual’s professional background, workplace history, and relevant experience to verify their identity and justify their potential for the position. 

Making sure employment verification checks are performed on each applicant guarantees that corporate entities onboard only legitimate employees that are in the best interest of the company. 

Why is Employment Verification Important?

Job candidates often lie to hiring managers about their past experience, fabricate information about their role in the previous company, and misrepresent their responsibilities and achievements. To avoid any discrepancies in employee data and their actual experience, background checks are essential. Employment verification checks assist employers and human resource officers in identifying and taking down dishonest applicants.

How to Carry Out Employment Checks?

When it comes to Knowing Your Employee, there are certain challenges faced by hiring personnel. Some of these include resume accuracy, acquiring candidate data from social platforms, and verifying the credibility of employment status, maintaining a consistent policy, and staying compliant with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). 

Listed below are some commonly practised employment verification checks.

 1- Validating Social Security Number (SSN)

These checks make sure that the applicant’s social security number belongs to a legitimate citizen, and that their name, aliases, date of birth, and address information correlate with their SSN. Any inconsistencies in this type of data can reveal possible criminal behaviour if the individual has lived under other aliases or addresses not disclosed in their national records. 

2- Referrals and Past Company Data

Hiring managers can contact the previous company of the candidate to make sure they are transparent about the information provided. In this regard, referrals are also a suitable means to verify the credibility of potential employees.

3- Checking Address History

These background checks are aimed at identifying possible criminal links by verifying where the candidate has lived in the past. By carrying out address history checks, hiring managers and making sure the resources they hire are free from criminal charges.  

4- Screening through Watchlists

Oftentimes, businesses would want to verify their employees against certain watchlists maintained by financial regulators. These lists contain data about Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), high-risk individuals, or fugitives. When we talk about verifying employment status, adverse media screening also plays a crucial role in exposing candidates with a higher risk. 

KYC Checks During Employment Verification 

As a common practice, employers manually verify a candidate’s status by checking through ID documents, experience letters, referrals, salary slips and related certifications. This process is usually time-consuming and is not ultimately efficient in terms of resource and revenue building. 

A robust Know Your Customer (KYC) verification software can enable companies to highlight inconsistencies in employee data that may lead to employment fraud. This not only ensures that proper due diligence standards are met, but also that only legitimate employees are onboarded with corporate entities.

Suggested Reads:

Employee Verification – First Line of Defence Against Corporate Fraud
Employees’ Digital Identity Verification for Remote Hiring