Pre-Employment screening should be part of your hiring process

Hiring cannot be based on reviewing an application and interviewing.
In today's competitive environment, Hiring is no more of just reviewing an application and interviewing an individual. Human resource departments are entrusted to do a bit more. Employees are key to the success of an organization. World is full of genuine and fraud people, it is therefore essential to identify and hire the best qualified individual for the job. Human Resource departments need to take many other steps to verify the accuracy of the information provided by a candidate in his resume rather than just hiring a candidate on his face value or his job application. Hence you need to spend time to conduct pre-employment screening.

Pre-Employment Screening is conducted prior to hiring an candidate and it involves verification of all the information provided by the candidate in his resume or the job application. Just like a dirty fish can spoil a pond, a bad hiring decision can impact healthy atmosphere at work place and indirectly affects profitability and the efficiency of an organization. Hence, every organization should have budgets for pre-employment screening and it should be made a necessary part of every hiring decision.

Pre-Employment Screening can be done on multiple parameters. An organization needs to identify for itself which of these are of utmost importance to their line of business.

Criminal Background Checks
Often individuals tend to hide their criminal past. It is important for an organization to check the criminal history of an applicant to ensure that they do not hire an individual who has a history of crimes such as theft and assault. Hiring such an individuals can put your organization at a financial risk or security of other employees at risk. Thus, criminal background check is one of the most sought after in pre-employment check.

Validation through Professional References
Another common form of pre-employment screening is validation from the professional references. Speaking to a Professional Reference provided by the candidate gives you opportunity to discuss the candidate with the reference at the same time you can actually validate if the reference provided is really qualified to be a reference for the candidate.

Employment History Verification
Another important form of pre-employment screening is verification of the candidates past employment history. Without verification of this information you cannot make out for sure if the candidate has really worked with the companies he has mentioned in his resume. Often this is conducted by contacting the Human Resource department of the companies listed in candidates resume.

Educational Credential Check
Often it is seen after hiring that candidate does not have basic skills he should have possessed by means of educational qualifications mentioned in his resume. Through the educational credential check you make sure that the candidate is really qualified and has not presented fake certificates/mark-sheets of his qualification. Doing this as a part of pre-employment screening can save you from any disappointment at later stage.

All the above means of verification or validation involves communicating with multiple organization and individuals. Hence, it requires considerable of a person involved who has no interest in your business and extracting information from these sources could be challenging and time consuming. Often professional help is available for each of these services. One need to build a network of such people and institutions who can provide you with all of these validations in a timely manner which further ensures higher productivity for your organization.

Kukarma.com is one such collaborative initiative that can help you get to the information like reviews and ratings of an candidate, his past employment history, his personal details through the internet.