Discrepancies in work experience and resume frauds are on a rise. Majority candidates often lie about their past employments and salary. Some even produce false certificates on company letterheads, lie about bonus earned, reasons to quit previous job, and provide false references. Intense competition and a desire to secure a better job force the candidates to fake their resumes. While some resume frauds can be easily identified by an experienced recruiter, others are hard to figure out. As a result, companies end up making wrong hiring decisions.

Fortunately, past employment verification is a reliable solution to this problem. Any recruiter or human resource professional can perform it before hiring a potential employee. It might sound like a waste of time and money to many, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Here are different reasons why past employment verification has become crucial in the hiring process.

Identify the smallest of lies

No matter how hard you try, you cannot judge a candidate from his face. It's difficult to identify whether an applicant is lying about his or her employment at the time of interview, until you dig deeper.

Past employment verification unveils any lies related to work experience, job title, last withdrawn salary, and status of exit formalities.

For example, a candidate might have claimed of being paid INR 50,000 for his job by his previous company. He might have also been successful in producing a fake salary proof. However, verification of his past employment records can help you soon find out that his salary was INR 40,000. Would this change your opinion of the candidate?

Sniff out the truth about work experience

In a competitive job market, candidates do not hesitate to lie about their work experience to appear more attractive to employers.

Your decision to hire an employee is largely affected by the work experience of a candidate. Does he or she have required experience to handle the responsibilities of the position you have to offer?  How will his or her experience help in the growth of your business? These are a few questions that you usually consider while making a hiring decision. But, what if the experience mentioned in the resume is false? Your decision will be negatively affected.

But, past employment verification uncovers whether a candidate actually worked in the capacity mentioned on the resume or not.

Reduce the risk of bad-hire

You can't let a bad-hire take a toll on your business. According to a study by the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), a single bad-hire can cost up to five times a bad hire's annual salary. Not only this, when a wrong employee is unable to undertake his or her job responsibilities, business productivity is affected.

A thorough past employment verification helps hire someone who is right fit for your organization. The risk of mis-hire is reduced and hence the money lost due to bad-hiring.

Verifying work history and other employment related details of a candidate is not an option, it has become necessary when you want to have the right employee on board. So, don't lose sight of it to collect information that can help you make right hiring decisions.