Do Referred Candidates Need A Background Check

By Author: Savio Vadakkan
Total Articles: 58
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It is often said that what you do not know, does not hurt you. If there is one area this saying does not hold true, it has to be employee hiring.

With these alarming numbers, there clearly is no alternative to background screening of employees, even if the candidate has been referred to, by your star performer.

While employee referral is an important recruiting tool for any organization which has tangible benefits such as saving time & cost of finding talent, the cost saving certainly does not apply to background screening. Hiring managers often assume that employee referral solutions are trustworthy, however this may not always be the case, on account of the following:

1) The employee may not know many aspects of the referred candidate’s professional profile especially from the years prior to their association

2) Worse still, the employee may be trying to help a friend.

Employee background checks assume even greater importance in times of economic downturn, such as these, when with growth in the rate of unemployment, the rate of employment application fraud ...
... is also increasing. Employment applications are replete with increase of experience, education, and credentials. Not just fake degrees but also fake job references are on an increase.

In such times, even if a candidate comes through an employee referral tool, it makes imminent sense to go through a background screening process. Any cost saving by scraping the background screening process, may cost the organization dearly, if after investing time & energy on the candidate, his candidature is not found appropriate.

Some of the important background screening areas, involve evaluating educational qualifications, employment history, job functions, salary details, as also the details of why the candidate left each job. It may also help to check the candidate’s history online to see if there are any discrepancies.

Irrespective of the social recruiting process, it is in the realm of industry best practices to evaluate a referred candidate just like you would evaluate all other candidates.In the absence of thorough background checks, you stand the risk of making an “Adverse Selection”, which is likely to have a far-reaching impact on your existing employees too.

With effective background checks, on the other hand, organizations stand to benefit in terms of reducing the fear of bad hires, minimizing instances of employee theft, reducing employee turnover rates and last but not the least, creating an overall safe & conducive work environment.

Author Bio :

Savio Vadakkan is the Marketing Professional at ZALP, a unique employee referral tool booster. ZALP helps organizations tap the full potential of their employee referral program using advanced social media integration, social recruiting and interesting features like recruiting tool, gamification.