Discrepancies In Education Verification

By Author: Naman Vohra
Total Articles: 133
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Employee verification practices have gained prominence since couple of years not oly because of the western influence but also because of the realization of benefits of background screening as part of hiring processes as well as pertaining to the workforce quality. Even the statistics and research indicates towards the importance of adopting employee screening practices.

As per a research conducted on overall case wise discrepancy by a leading background verification company in India, the rate of discrepancy amounts to 18%, which means that of all 100 cases, 18 cases have discrepant information. Case refers to background check of one individual and one case can involve any number of checks.

Of all the checks contributing to the overall discrepancies, educational background is one of those aspects of a candidate which suffers from a great deal of discrepancies. Other aspect suffering from a similar discrepancy rate is primarily employment background.

A pattern has been observed in the nature of discrepancies made in the educational background. As per the research report, about 50.84% of discrepancies consist ...
... of fake and forged documents, primarily the educational certificates. About 40.8% of discrepancies have arisen due to degrees specified from universities that are fake. These two reasons bring the maximum discrepancy to the table.

The other reasons which do contribute to the discrepancies includes contradictory information being provided but the job candidate, incomplete education details, courses that are actually unrecognized, and dual education.

Whatever be the reason for tweaking information and forging documents, discrepancy remains a matter of concern for the employers across the world. Employment history and educational qualifications are all the more important because these are two main factors on the basis of which a candidate is judged to be competent or not. Overlooking discrepancy in these two cases result in wrong hiring and mismatch in job requirements and resource capability. This can be a grave mistake on the part of company, possibly leading to unsatisfactory quality of output. This can also lead to certain level of losses for the employer.

People resort to such ‘tricks’ for the jobs they eye but do not have the requisite qualifications. With a tweak here and a lie there, the possibility of landing their targeted job increases.

Small and medium companies should a better note of this as the number of hiring is less in there. This makes it essential for such companies to be extra cautious when it comes to quality of hire because even one wrong hire can cost them dearly.

~ Naman is associated with a leading background screening company that specializes in Executive Screening