Employment verification has long been a critical aspect of pre-employment background checks. But the process isn’t as simple as it seems.
The Historical Process
In the past, the only way to verify past employment information provided on applicant resumes was to contact each one of an applicant’s previous employers, usually by phone. This put the onus on the hiring managers or HR staff to track down every previous company’s HR representative to validate employment dates, position title, and other relevant information.
It sounds simple enough, but this task can be arduous and time-consuming in practice, especially in fast-paced industries with high turnover or small businesses or startups that may not have thorough records or a dedicated HR team.
Furthermore, for the HR departments at each previous employer, this is seen as a low-priority task. Verifying information for their previous employees doesn’t contribute to their company’s success. It’s seen as a necessary task but certainly isn’t treated as a high priority, nor is it a measure of the HR team’s competence or performance within the company.
This leaves the burden on the company doing the hiring to track down the right people in each HR department to get the required information. Once they make contact, they must fax or email a form proving they have consent to access the report. It’s not uncommon for this process to take multiple follow-ups. And if a company is doing a lot of hiring at a given time, the process becomes even more time-consuming and burdensome.
The Paystub Approach
One alternative is to ask applicants to provide paystubs from each of their previous employers. But it’s risky to depend on this information exclusively since it’s relatively easy for applicants to alter or completely fabricate their paystubs – especially with the prevalence of the internet. It can also be difficult for applicants to track down paystubs for all their previous employers, meaning the information may be incomplete. So even if your HR department asks for pay stubs, you’ll still have to contact the applicant’s previous employers to verify the information on those paystubs.
The added complication is that it’s now illegal to ask applicants about their previous salary – information that paystubs disclose in many states.
The Work Number
This service was established in 1955 to solve the employment verification dilemma. According to their website, they have over 1 million employment records in their database. However, there are more than 32 million employers in the United States today. So while The Work Number can help, it’s far from a comprehensive, one-stop-shop. The service is also costly and doesn’t allow for re-verification, meaning you must pay every time you run a check for a candidate.
The employment verification world hasn’t seen key innovation since The Work Number’s advent for a straightforward reason: employment verifications are complicated and challenging to conduct.
First Contact HR’s Solution
The easiest way to handle employment verifications is to outsource them. This lessens the burden on your staff by letting a separate entity handle verifications.
For more information or to request a quote, reach out to First Contact HR today.