HR Recruitment Screening
Being involved with HR Recruitment is one of the most important HR responsibilities. Finding and keeping key talent is crucial to the success of the business, for this to happen an effective recruitment process is key.
These days employers like to know the background of prospective, even current, employees and for small business owners the question of how to find the best employees without abusing privacy rights. Also, in today’s business world it is increasingly important to protect your company from financial, reputational and security risk.
Most organisations know that good employees are an essential element of building a strong reputation, something which can take years to build. However a reputation can be very fragile and could be damaged beyond repair by unqualified or unsuitable staff. An example of this was recently reported in the news regarding more than 400 police officers and staff of the British Police forces who were disciplined or dismissed for unethical behavior and accessing confidential police information.
Negative public opinion, security breaches, media attention, fines and a loss in revenue through reduced business can all occur as a result of an incident of unethical behavior by staff. Bad press does not go away as quickly as it used to and this may have a negative effect on your company. So the question is how can businesses be confident that they are recruiting honest and reliable people to work for their companies and not exposing their companies to unnecessary risks? For some business owners the question of how to find the best employees without abusing privacy rights and other laws can be very confusing.
It would be naive for employers to take today’s job applicant’s CVs at face value. People are prepared to go to a lot of effort to get a job, particularly at the current time of economic uncertainty when positions are scarce and an influx of redundancies mean that qualified candidates have swamped the market.
Candidates have been known to lie on their CVS, some may exaggerate qualifications thinking that it will give them the edge on other candidates, others will fabricate their employment history in an attempt to cover up things like dismissal or even prison sentences. To do this they are committing a fraudulent act and these could result in severe consequences. Last year an NHS executive was given a three month prison sentence for lying on his CV. Most CV cheating, however, is less complicated exaggeration, for example upgrading a degree or overstating a former salary.
If you are involved in the HR recruitment process, one of the easiest steps your company can take to help to understand your candidates, and be aware of any possible risks they could pose, is pre-employment background screening – a process of thoroughly checking CVs and verifying a candidate’s suitability. For example, a credit check will highlight whether someone being considered for a financially influential role at work has problems managing money at home.
Pre-employment screening, if carried out properly can cause a barrier for fraudsters trying to get a job in your company. A basic level of screening should be carried out on all new employees. More detailed screening should be carried out on candidates applying for sensitive roles. By carrying out the screening you are making a statement that dishonesty will not be tolerated and if you are trying to cover up something be aware as employers can check out the facts.
Pre-employment screening for employment purposes is a legal and recommended practice if conducted in the correct fashion. With an increasingly multinational workforce, checking a CV and verifying a candidate’s suitability is not straight forward as you have to deal with international time differences, language barriers and variations in what both legal and culturally acceptable from country to country.
Swamped with information available on the internet, HR recruiters tend to rely on social network sites such as facebook to supposedly “screen” candidates, but as the content is generated by the candidates themselves, this too could contain the same lies which appear on their CV. It is also very easy to set up social media profiles under other people’s names so the content may not have been authored by the person you think it has.
Regular screening of employees should be conducted as their situation may have changed from their appointment time at the company, therefore regular screening on criminal record checking and searches for any adverse financial records. Details of the regular screening should clearly be set out in an employees employment contract.
Many organisations undertake background screening for their most senior members of staff, few have a policy that extends across their entire workforce. Often the lowest level staff poses the highest risk to companies, but because they’re coming in at a lower level, it’s not always seen as cost-effective to complete the checks on these staff members, although the risk is the same if not worse as these employees may have the same access to financial information, valuable stock or customer data and lower levels of corporate loyalty.
Employers should also consider screening of temporary staff and contractors. These staff members may only be employed for a short time but they present a higher risk to businesses as they have access to high risk areas such as payroll systems. Many large companies are now screening potential and current employees. SME’s are also recognising that it is a cost effective procedure to use third parties or even in-house screening practices to prevent bad hires. Pre-employment screening begins when the final candidate or candidates are selected.
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