Why Pre-Employment Screening is Crucial to Employers

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Candidate screening is one of the crucial tasks you have as a recruiter. However, analysing piles of resumes for a specific job position and selecting the top candidates to move forward in the recruitment process can be an overwhelming responsibility, especially if there’s incomplete or insufficient information.

That’s why many companies look for alternative ways to improve candidate screening and develop a more efficient yet valid recruitment process. In this scenario, pre-employment screening plays a vital role in allowing recruiters to make a selection of candidates based on evidence and accurate data. Combined with job verification services and new screening tools, companies now have many methods to speed up the hiring process and onboard top talent.

Recommended checks for candidate screening typically include identity checks, criminal checks, credit checks, education and qualification checks, and previous work references.

Aside from an efficient hiring process, here are the top reasons to invest in job verification services and other types of candidate screening.

For more information and inquiries about job verification services and candidate screening, don’t hesitate to contact Aptitude today.

Fraud Prevention

According to INC.com, about 85% of applicants lie on their resumes or on their job applications. This means it’s easy to potentially hire unsuitable or unqualified people if you don’t conduct background checks or invest in job verification services during the recruitment process. The most common types of fraudulent behaviour are lying about things such as qualifications and skills, past employment, and job titles plus responsibilities. These parts of the resume often get embellished as applicants assume that prospective employers won’t look into them.

Fraudulent behaviour from employees can be detrimental in many ways. It can impact on the overall team’s productivity as well as quality of work and service. It can also affect your customers and reputation, seriously damaging the growth of your business. Over time, it can seriously damage the growth of your business.

Pre-employment checks and job verification services can help you avoid recruitment mistakes, saving your company time, effort, and money.

Time is Important

As any successful employer understands that time is a valuable commodity and any way to reduce a task’s length without compromising on the quality should be carefully examined.

Candidate screening and job verification services are great ways to save both time and money for HR teams.  These ensure that employers don’t have to conduct time-consuming interviews with candidates who are neither suitable nor qualified for the open positions. The overall recruitment process then becomes more time and resource efficient as you can quickly weed out unqualified candidates early on.

The screening process is also both time and resource efficient as you can disregard a high volume of applicants you deem unsuitable for the role. Whether it’s because they have made mistakes on their CV or they don’t have the knowledge base or skill sets necessary for a position, screening ensures you sift through those that don’t meet your standards with minimal fuss.

Data Security

With the introduction of General Data Production Regulation or GDPR, as well as the growth of connected devices or mobile usage through IoT (Internet of Things), the way we interact with data and store it is more important than ever.

Not just for the purpose of legal compliance, but to provide maximum protection for confidential information that belongs to your customers. To date, almost half of all data breaches originate from an insider threat, and most of those are intentional. In today’s technologically advanced world, security can be a major problem and businesses should have measures in place to prevent data loss and intelligence theft.

In this case, screening candidates and investing in job verification services for applicants is essential for businesses that handle huge volumes of customer data. This isn’t just applicable to candidates and newly onboarded employees either. Screening is crucial for any staff member moving into a position where they will be handling sensitive information or a role that entails bigger responsibilities.

Reduced Employee Turnover

As pre-employment screening and job verification services enable you to filter out qualified applicants with valid credentials, it’s more probable for you to hire candidates that will completely fulfill their job requirements and excel in their positions. Additionally, when fewer employees shuffle in and out of your company, you’ll notice a decrease in the costs that come with job advertisements, additional training, and temporary hires.

Protection of Workforce

The purpose of background checks and job verification services isn’t just to protect your company – it’s to protect your employees too. As an employer, it is your duty to ensure that everyone in your workforce is protected from threats. This includes all members of your staff and any contractor. Fraud and employee background checks are imperative, especially with the fraught political landscape we’re facing today.

Creating an honest and open work environment where employees accept everyone regardless of their background, political views, and religion is something every business should aim for. If you find any forms of extremism in a candidate based on the details provided by a previous employer, thorough checks will help you avoid these problems before they occur. These also safeguard your workforce from problems of discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment, and acts of violence. Having little to no tolerance for bad behaviour will improve morale, resulting in better staff retention and a much happier workforce.

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Conclusion: Get the Right Workforce with Employee Screening

Each time you bring new employee in your company, you make long-term onboarding and training investments. Hiring the right employees is an important part of running a company and goes a long way to ensuring your business succeeds and thrives. On the other hand, if you don’t hire the candidates that best fit the role, it’s highly likely the new hire won’t succeed on the job and all the time, money and effort spent to onboard and train them is lost.

Having a pre-employment screening process and investing in job verification services will help contribute to a hiring process that will ultimately help you form a suitable and sustainable workforce.

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