Benefits of Verifying Education Credentials
Hiring an underqualified employee is tantamount to launching a project premised on lies or unrealistic expectations. No matter how diligently you try to steer the company in the right direction, your underqualified staff will always pull in the opposite direction, usually inadvertently. Therefore, it pays to exercise due diligence when verifying a job seeker’s education credentials before engaging them.
Read on as we uncover the numerous benefits of verifying employee education credentials. First, let’s start by understanding what the practice entails.
What Is Education Verification?
According to Harvard Business Review, many job applicants aren’t completely honest about their academic qualifications, skills, and interests. Some may embellish their credentials in a bid to outshine the next applicant. Others may blatantly misrepresent their abilities, hoping their lies will never catch up with them.
For recruiters seeking to fill vacant positions fast, even glaring red flags in a job seeker’s credentials can easily fly under the radar. And that’s where you need to verify education verification.
Education verification basically entails running deep background checks to verify a job seeker’s academic background. This concept goes beyond the casual inspection of a job applicant’s certificates.
Education verification may happen online or at the physical interview location. Either way, the findings must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the job seeker’s academic qualifications are exactly as represented in their certificates.
Benefits of Verifying Education Credentials
The primary benefit of verifying education credentials is that it helps you establish that a job seeker’s real academic qualifications match their claims and submitted certificates. If you’re looking to hire a mechanical engineer, it’s not enough to take the job-seeker at their word. For all you know, they may never have attended an engineering class but only falsified their certificates. Conducting deep background checks offers the peace of mind of knowing that the job applicant could be the person you’re looking for.
Another reason to verify education credentials is that it allows you to assess the integrity of the interviewee. The mere fact that a job applicant can lie about their qualifications reflects poorly on their integrity and credibility. If they can have the audacity to spin such lies, how much worse would they do your company if you hired them to serve in sensitive departments like accounts or procurement?
The following are other reasons why education background checks are necessary;
It Allows You to Gauge a Job-seeker’s Competency
The quality of education varies significantly from one institution to another. A law graduate from Harvard University is likely to be more competent than a graduate who went to a budding, middle-level college.
You may not be knowledgeable about all the colleges and universities out there. But by simply conducting an education background check, you’ll be able to compare the competency scores of the various institutions your interviewees attended. You can then select the best candidate based on where they graduated from.
It Minimizes the Risks of Hiring Unqualified Personnel
The past few years have seen many recruiters shift from an academic-based approach to a skills-based one when interviewing job seekers.
However, education qualifications remain the greatest determinant of professional competency. That’s especially true for technical professions like engineering, accountancy, and even law.
Doing background checks on your would-be employees can minimize the risks of engaging unqualified personnel, safeguarding your company’s reputation.
It Minimizes Operational Costs and Future Liabilities
With too many established firms, recruitment and onboarding is not only time-consuming. It’s also a capital-intensive one.
Hiring the wrong employee means all the resources in the process went down the drain. But that’s only half the agony. The other half is that you’ll incur additional expenses for training the underqualified staff or sourcing their replacement. And it’s only worse if your local labor laws prohibit letting such employees go without some form of restitution or severance pay.
Besides, your company may be liable for negligence and oversights caused by the unqualified staffer.
Should You Verify Education Credentials By Yourself?
It’s possible to verify education qualifications by yourself. But the process can often be too long and tedious. That’s especially if there are several job-seekers to interview.
Note that you’ll need to contact every institution for each potential employee. While some colleges and universities may respond swiftly, others might put you on hold for weeks or even months. You certainly don’t want your recruitment process to last this long.
Therefore, your best bet is to invest in an educational verification service. These companies maintain employees whose primary job description entails running education background checks. They’re also well-versed in higher education accreditation standards and will let you know instantly whether your would-be employee went to a reputable institution or not.
Some educational verification services go the extra mile in checking the criminal background of prospective employees. This can save you the agony of hiring a fugitive or unreformed convict whose influence can erode your company’s reputation.
Wrap Up
We cannot overemphasize the importance of running background education checks on a job-seeker before onboarding them. These checks are the surest way to determine whether you’re getting the right candidate for the job.
If your job advert attracted hundreds of applicants and you have shortlisted a handful, you may want to engage an educational verification service. For a reasonable fee, you can sit pretty as you wait for these companies to match you with the most qualified and credible candidate.
