Employment verification has the maximum discrepancy: Report

In a competitive job market with shrinking job opportunities, candidates in large numbers have been found to misrepresent information in their applications to prospective employers. The background check discrepancy levels shot up from 10.29% in FY2016 to a whopping 15.21% in FY2017, an increase of 48% over the previous year, according to Authbridge’s benchmark Annual Trends Report on Background Screening in India. In other words, nearly one out of six cases (candidates) background checked by Authbridge was found to have an element of mismatch between information supplied by the candidate and actual, verified information.

The report, titled ‘Background Screening in India: Trends and Insights 2017’ is fourth in a series of benchmark annual trends reports. An analysis over lakhs of checks and cases conducted by employers across India Inc., this report provides rich insights about discrepancy trends in hiring across industries, states, genders and age groups.

This year’s figures indicate that as j ob candidates are increasingly more likely to misrepresent information to prospective employers, companies need to adopt comprehensive background screening programs to keep up the quality levels of their hiring.

Ajay Trehan, Founder & CEO, Authbridge said: “Increased competition and easy access to job related information, along with a dynamic job market has led to increased faking of information by candidates, demonstrating the need for Trust-onDemand across industries. Organisations are responding to these challenges by developing structured background verification programmes to ensure they only hire trusted candidates with the right fit.”

Some key findings of the report include employment verification witnessed the maximum discrepancy followed by address verification, reference check and education verification respectively.

Financial Services industry had the maximum discrepant cases with a rate of 24.99%, followed by Telecom. Discrepancy in the Internet/e-commerce/ Dotcom industry decreased by 20% in FY 2017 when compared with FY 2016.

The analysis reveal that address records are most manipulated in this industry, which saw a sharp rise this year. The discrepancy was found to increase with age group in this industry.

Police verification, database check, ID check and drug test are a few checks which are high on risk, according to the report.