Background verification process while recruiting is the need of the hour. With the increasing instances of the banks getting scammed by fake employees and a lot of harassment issues being recorded because of unruly conduct of certain employees, employers need to cautious before hiring anyone in their company. Since it is a time when cyber threats are very common plaguing security concerns of the organizations across the globe, pre-employee background verification has become more indispensable than ever before.
Hence, recruiters must now carefully scrutinize past records of applicant's, their personal information, work experiences in previous organizations and criminal records. This will help them build a greater sense of trust and reliability on the existing employees or potential employees, apart from being in line with the contemporary regulatory requirements.
The age-old process of employee background verification was a manual and paper oriented process. It was managed by the external agencies, which would cost much higher and had a longer turnaround time. It was quite difficult for HR professionals to conduct background screening on candidates all alone by themselves only, especially when they need to conduct physical address verification of the concerned employees. But with the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) in HR function along with other facets, pre-employee background verification is also being transformed for good. The process of verifying any employee background is now more efficient, thanks to AI. Information of majority of candidates is available online in public database which can be saved on any physical source. Going through all the information manually can be boring therefore new technologies have been developed to verify background of employee. With this advancement of technology, verifying employment records, addresses and any criminal charges can all be done within few clicks, let's see how technology can assist us in background verification process:
Quick Data Accessibility
With artificial intelligence (AI), a large amount of data can be deciphered just in few minutes. All one needs to do is to enter the person's name in the search engine. The recruiter will be able to see all the matches related to the name from databases across the web. All this will be done in a matter of seconds. So think, if a simple Google search can take you to all the social media profiles of a person like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, imagine what the result that will be given to you with search algorithms specially designed for background verification. In case the search is one by a finely tuned system it can streamline search results even more precisely and giving you results that can give you matches on multiple criteria.
Smarter Data Analysis
Combination of AI and machine learning can take the process of background verification to a whole new level by prioritizing relevancy of data. New technologies can now analyze data and present the hiring company with more useful data first. Criminal records, address verification, past employment verification can all be screened without having to find out where the candidate holidayed last summer.
Analysis of risk and threats
Another primary purpose of background verification is to ensure that as a recruiter you are hiring a reliable candidate. The newer technologies of AI and software algorithms can pick up keywords like 'termination of employment' or "fraud" and gather any data that might be relevant to such factors in the profile of the candidate. With such kind of search result, it becomes quite easier for the HR to understand why that person left his previous organization or why he was fired from his last place of employment. Based on available information, an HR can decide wither the candidate is trustable of not. For example, say an employee was fired on grounds of suspicion for siphoning funds, but the case was not proven neither was any complaint was filed to the police, obviously this will not be recorded in criminal records therefore with the help of machine learning these types of risks can be avoided and overcome.
Automatic Scoring
By keeping few of the point into consideration while doing background verification, artificial intelligence can generate score of any candidate instantly. Looking at past performances, employment history, mentions of awards, accolades or published papers, the program could give the applicant a higher score. On the other hand, furnishing false details or discrepancies in the past records could bring down a candidate's score considerably.
How Technology Revolution Has Benefitted Background Verification
The main function of a HR department is to select and hire skilled and reliable employee for the company. New technologies have completely revolutionized the way background checks are conducted, making the hiring of new employees a much less labour-intensive task. Imagine if a recruiter starts screening a vast number of applications they receive and then verifying the provided information it can turn into a tiring and time-consuming affair making them miss the deserving candidate. So by using latest technologies in the process of recruitment a company can not only increase their efficiency but can save a lot of time. With this comes amazing benefits of using technology for background verification process.
Lesser turnaround time
In larger organizations especially where there are hundreds of job applications which needs to be screened, if the HR department starts doing the process manually it would take weeks and even months to complete the process. However, if you use a dedicated software or a secured online platform it can help the organizations reduce the turnaround time (TAT) for the whole process of background verification considerably to a matter of minutes.
For Example, background screening services by cFirst can be used by organizations for conducting verification quickly and easily. With the latest technology in operation new employer has to send a request to the service provider for performing a background check on a new hire and receive all the records about the past without any hassle. This can save a lot of time which can be later on used for more productive tasks by HR personnel.
Enhance data security
It is the responsibility of every company to protect the information of every employee to get out of the organization. Yet, while conducting background verification certain employee data like the Permanent account number or Aadhar number is required to be shared between the employee and the service provider while conducting background verification. Though background verification is conducted strictly only after the person being screened gives consent, the information should also be shared responsibly without any threats to the security. With the help of technology, HR can securely share the details of ex-employee or data about any prospective employee for performing background checks and be ensures that the data does not fall into the wrong hands.
Accurate and higher quality background checks
If any company verifies an employee's background manually then there is a chance that just a cursory sweep of records is conducted. If it happens it might let a lot of information fall through the crack. For instance, some crucial details about the candidate might get overlooked while manually conducting a criminal record check or reference check.
If you are using the right technology and the best support, you will be able to conduct more thorough background verification. Moreover, nothing can be more accurate than automated results and undoubtedly they will be of much better quality than the manual ones.
Access to huge data repositories
Technology in recruitment can help teams run even through the negative database while conducting a criminal background check on the employees. If any employee has some kind of negative past records then company can choose the employee who has a clean record.
End to end automation
With the help of technology, the process of background verification can be easily automated. Prospective candidates will just have to fill up an online form in the company's website with all their details, and all the related data will automatically get populated to the employee screening platform.
Promise of better work environment
One of the major advantages of using latest technology in background verification is that it can improve your work environment instantly and you will get top quality employees in your company.
Bottom Line
Finally, it can be concluded that latest technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning will simulate the thought processes of the analyst's by helping in locating connections, decoding their meaning and raising the red flags, if and wherever necessary. Data can be collected from various sources, like social media, blacklists, adverse media, legal records, and various other online platforms.
This is the time technology is ruling the process of employee background verification and its rational application. So like every other business which technology has revolutionized, background screening will also undergo metamorphosis but albeit for the better with incredible power of technology!
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