What Do I Need to Know About Employment Verification? 6 Jul 2018

Are you forgetting an essential background check in your hiring process? Sadly, many applicants try to trick employers by lying on their resumes. This happens more often than you might think.

According to a CareerBuilder survey, 58% percent of employers have caught lies on applicants’ resumes. Many of these lies involve past employment. If a job applicant doesn’t have the right employment history, they may not have the experience needed for the job they’re applying for. And if they can’t do their job, you’ll have to hire a replacement. Making sure your applicant is telling the truth matters.

But, what do you actually learn from employment verification? What does it include and how can you find the right company to do it? Let’s look at the answers to these questions.

What Is Employment Verification?

Employment verification is a type of background check that looks for inconsistencies between the information an applicant provides and their actual employment history. Like any other background check, there are laws and regulations that limit the information you can use in your hiring process. Here are some of the things this kind of check can reveal:

• If the job applicant worked at the companies they claimed to have worked at.
• The dates that the applicant started and stopped working at a company. Sometimes applicants hide gaps in their work history by stretching their work start and end dates.
• The title(s) they held. Applicants may lie about their title to embellish their job responsibilities in order to get a higher salary.
• The applicant’s previous salary. Although, certain states have banned the use of this information in background checks due to the fact that it may encourage continued lower salaries for women and minority groups.
• Why the applicant no longer works at their old job (certain states don’t allow employment verification checks to include this information).
• If the applicant is eligible for rehire (certain states do not let employment verification checks use this information).

How Is Employment Verification Done?

First, the job applicant has to sign a waiver for you to legally run an employment verification check on them. Next, the company that you hired to do the background check gets in touch with the former employer of the job applicant to confirm their job history.

If the company that the job applicant worked at is no longer in business, the applicant can prove they worked there by showing their pay-stub, W-2, or other tax documents.

How Can Employment Verification Help My Company?

Employment verification checks can help your company by confirming that a job candidate has the experience needed for certain positions. They can show you if a company fired an applicant due to serious offenses or incompetence.

It can also warn you that an applicant is lying on their job application. If they are lying about their past employment, that implies they may lie about things that could endanger your company.

How Can I Find The Right Company to Do an Employment Verification For My Company?

You can find the right company to do your employment verification background checks by looking for a company that understands the laws involved in performing background checks of this nature, that offers different types of employment verification background checks, and is willing to do interviews with references in person.

At Trusted Employees, we offer employment verification that’s in compliance with the legal side of things. We also do different types of employment verification, depending on your needs. Contact us to learn more about our custom background check packages for employment verification.