Today, many businesses have shifted their operations remotely. Pre-pandemic, a study reports that 16% of companies globally are 100% fully remote. With a 24% increase in employees opting to work remotely in 2022, experts predict the trend will only continue to grow post-pandemic.
While the hiring process has become faster due to today’s digital setup, unfortunately, recruiting for remote employees also poses more threats, which organizations should be aware of and prepare for, especially when exponentially expanding their workforce.
Verifying a job candidate’s identity is now a top priority rather than an optional measure.
Importance of Identity Verification Before Hiring
Identity verification not only helps your candidate checking endeavors, but it can also benefit your company’s organizational processes in many ways. Here are some prominent instances of the importance of identity verification before hiring.
1. Enhances the hiring process
The decision to conduct candidate identity verification before hiring can enhance your organization’s overall hiring process. To improve the recruitment cycle, you can require applicants submit the necessary documentation for identity verification ahead of time.
Acquiring information before hiring makes accessing data easier, thus speeding up the verification process and reducing friction.
2. Speeds up onboarding time
The hiring process often requires data collection in various stages, which can be time-consuming, especially if your company has multiple posts to fill. Fortunately, incorporating identity verification measures at the start of the hiring cycle can speed up your onboarding timeline.
By beginning the hiring process with identity verification, you can eliminate extensive data collection points, expediting screening and onboarding.
3. Increases productivity
Recruitment is time and labor-intensive, especially if you aim to remotely complete requests for hard-to-fill roles. By starting the hiring process with identity verification, you can expedite or even eliminate methods of collecting information.
With the data-heavy procedures finished before hiring, you and your team can focus on more profitable tasks that scale your company.
4. Protects the company from fraudulent applicants
One of the most significant benefits of identity verification before hiring is it deters fraudulent candidates from applying for your company, due to the resulting legal ramifications if caught for identity theft.
For an extra layer of protection, you can also advertise that candidate checking is a requirement for all would-be applicants, further discouraging individuals with nefarious motives.
5. Improves candidate experience
Conducting identity verification before hiring improves your experience as a recruiter and makes the hiring process more seamless for the applicants. Verifying identities early in the process enhances the candidates’ experience by ensuring the sensitive information they supplied is secure.
Additionally, with information stored and readily available, candidates don’t have to resubmit documents they’ve provided in previous stages of the hiring cycle.
5 Effective Ways to Verify a Job Applicant’s Identity
Now that you know the importance of candidate checking before hiring, let us discuss how to verify an identity efficiently. The following methods are actionable ways you can conduct candidate checking.
1. Arrange a video call interview
You may arrange a video call meeting if you want visual confirmation that the job applicant is a real person. Deepfakes and voice synthesis can also be better detected in this call. With the growing use of remote workers, this may be your best opportunity to vet potential fraudulent new hires, especially for those who you may never meet in person.
2. Conduct a reference check
A reference check can provide credible insight into the legitimacy of the prospective candidate’s identity, skills, and capabilities. While the applicant may look credible on their resume, a reference check can verify all the supplied information by speaking directly to their previous employers or colleagues.
Conducting a reference check will help you and your team better understand the type of individual and employee you’re considering hiring.
3. Check social media accounts
While not necessarily the most reliable source to verify a job candidate’s identity, checking their social media accounts can still help. You can cross-reference the information given, photos, and other details the applicant may have provided.
Creating fake identities online is extremely common, so only use the information collected from a candidate’s social media accounts as supporting references.
4. Consider doing a background check
If you want to go for a more extensive method to verify the authenticity of a prospective candidate’s identity, you can choose to conduct a background check. A background check gains more comprehensive information about a candidate’s work history, criminal record, and in some cases, financial history.
5. Use an identity verification technology
You can invest in identity verification technology like Know Your Employee (KYE) by Q5id to increase accuracy, efficiency, and security for your candidate-checking process. KYE is an employee-proofing solution designed to safeguard employees, customers, and a company and its reputation through a multi-step verification process.
With cases of identity theft continuing to rise, technology like KYE by Q5id can ensure the people you want to hire are who they claim to be.
Measure in Authenticity
The digitization of corporate processes and the rise of hybrid work setups have brought innovation, convenience, and efficiency that benefit businesses of all scales. However, the transition to remote working also partially enabled some individuals to exploit the system for their gain and falsify information regarding their identity for reasons like securing a job.
Fortunately, new strategies are readily available to strengthen your identity verification process for your job applicants. One effective way to do this is by incorporating identity verification technology to guard and gear up your operations from fraud.
If you want a reliable partner to help you execute identity verification strategies, look no further than Q5id.
An identity verification solutions provider known for turning complex challenges facing identity theft and fraud into the most proven identity management platform, Q5id offers services from some of the world’s leading identity, security, and technology companies.
Ready to get top-tier identity-proofing solutions for your company? Contact us today to learn more.
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