Background verification in India: Trends to Watch out for

Background verification still remains largely unregulated despite the various benefits it provides to organizations. It helps in reducing employee related frauds, including forged salary slips, incorrect designations and fabricated academic history in the resume. It also aids in keeping the organization’s brand damage free and ensures that only the right candidates are selected by the organization. Remember, you do not want a person who has a criminal past to be part of your organization; do you?

There is a positive correlation between background verification and corporate reputation which organizations in India have started realizing. Both small and big Indian organizations have realized the grave risk of selecting a wrong employee in the organization. This makes the case for conducting regular background verification on all the candidates during the hiring process.

During the current year, as the demand for talented individual grows, there will also be an increased demand for background screening as well as competent employee background screening companies. The following background verification trends will see more prominence in the coming months.

1. Social media screening will be on the rise

With the emergence of technology, more and more individuals are joining the social media revolution by posting their opinions on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In the year 2018, expect recruiters and human resource managers to use social media platforms to view, access and verify the candidate’s skill sets and ability. With the help of the social media accounts, recruiters will be able to get precise information pertaining to the candidate’s profile. This will help them to scrutinize the red flags that can raise problems for the organization if the candidate gets selected.

It has to be said that individuals have been found to be very transparent on social media platforms. This gives recruiters an opportunity to check their political opinions, including, any derogatory comment posted by them or photos shared by them showing substance abuse amongst others that can compromise the reputation of the organization.

2. Greater use of data analytics with the aid of technological tools

Data analytics and software tools aid recruiters to collect, assess and share the data easily with anyone. With these technological tools, you can expect greater transparency and precision in data collection and analyzing the collected information. By integrating the big things that are going to happen with big data, you can rest assured that with the assistance of an analytical software, you can expect better productivity and precision when it comes to conducting background verification in India.

3. Aadhaar will become the widely accepted identifier for conducting intelligent searches

The biggest challenge while conducting background verification in India

was the lack of a widely accepted identifier. In the US, background verification companies have been using social security number to search for criminal history, educational history, employment history, residential records etc. While, in India, there is a need for a similar mechanism that could use intelligent search option with the help of the individual’s name, father’s name, date of birth etc.

Earlier, this search used to show compromised and diverted results while entering common Indian names. But, with the implementation of the UIDAI-AADHAR program this problem has been resolved by the Government of India. In the near future, you would be able to source separate individual information with the help of AADHAR identifier which is a big thing!

Conclusion

Background verification of candidates is growing at a steady pace in India. We are seeing more and more companies hiring, background verification partners to help them select the best talent. With the emergence of these trends in the current year, you can expect the background verification process to improve which would give an impetus to the background verification companies to provide more precise and quick turnaround time solutions to the organizations. This would result in more and more organizations utilizing the background verification services to select the best talented candidates for their organization.

Lourdes Fernandes is the Business Head of cFIRST Background Checks, one of the leading employee background verification companies in India. Lourdes is an industry veteran and often writes about the articles.