Across industries, many positions require advanced educational qualifications or professional certifications to ensure preparedness for a particular job. Beyond traditional background screening – criminal history, past work experience, etc. – education verification confirms a candidate’s credentials, competency to perform work-related tasks, and helps business owners make informed hiring decisions.
Verifying educational credentials or certifications can be a complicated and time-consuming process without help from a qualified background screening provider. The right provider can help you bypass confusing privacy regulations, communication with multiple institutions, and transcript requests. In this article, we’ll explore how your organization can leverage education screening to hire the most qualified candidates for any position and avoid delays and legal risk by working with professional support.
Defining the Process
Education verification investigates a candidate’s educational background to determine their preparedness for a particular position and ensures alignment between statements made in interviews (or on a resume) and actual educational records.
Whether it’s confirming an earned degree, dates of attendance, GPA, or educational institutions attended, with the help of a professional background screening provider, this information can be quickly gathered and assessed through education verification. Education verification is especially helpful if any degrees or certifications were earned internationally, which is why The Orsus Group offers not only education verification, but also professional license verification and international education verification.
Core Benefits of Education Verification
Below, we’ll outline the core benefits of education verification and how it can strengthen your organization’s hiring, onboarding, and long-term operations.
Choosing the Right Candidate
Although the data varies, a number of surveys suggest that at least 1 in 3 candidates lie on their resumes, with some surveys indicating that 78% of candidates lie (or consider lying) about their backgrounds at some point in the hiring process. Mischaracterizing educational information is considered the second most common form of deception on resumes.
With this in mind, it’s essential for business owners and hiring managers to work with accurate, verifiable information about each candidate’s educational qualifications. It can mean the difference between hiring a fully qualified candidate or one who has knowingly misled their employer and is ill-prepared to fulfill the job responsibilities that lie ahead.
Avoiding Delays, Legal Headaches, and Slow Processing
As opposed to dedicating weeks to confirm educational information shared by an applicant through transcript requests or other means, working with a professional background screening provider expedites the entire process. The Orsus Group’s robust suite of background screening and verification services is paired with expert support that allows you to acquire necessary educational information quickly and accurately while speeding up hiring decisions, onboarding, and keeping your best candidates interested.
Gauging Integrity
Of course, it’s important to confirm qualifications (degrees earned, certifications, or otherwise) for a particular position, but education screening also lets you gauge a potential employee’s character, honesty and integrity. Naturally, you strive to hire candidates who are candid about their backgrounds and job preparedness. Education screening can alert you to issues with disclosed information and quickly verify the accuracy of a candidate’s resume.
Prevent Issues with Negligent Hiring Liability
If you hire a candidate whose educational credentials have not been properly confirmed, your organization could be held liable in the event that the new hire causes harm to others as a result of their irresponsible behavior on the job. To avoid a potential negligent hiring lawsuit, your organization should adopt education screening for any position that definitively requires certification(s) or other credentials which ensure job safety and overall job preparedness.
Guiding Salary and Wage Decisions
Although organizational policies vary in the public and private sectors, educational credentials can be a major factor in making compensation decisions for new employees. In general, employers are willing to pay more to candidates who possess advanced degrees or have noteworthy educational achievements, especially if those credentials will favorably impact the work completed within the organization.
Of course, if some or all of a candidate’s educational credentials are inaccurate or fabricated, this fact must be revealed as quickly as possible to prevent misinformed or negligent hiring, as well as financial costs to your business.
Expedite and Simplify Education Screening with The Orsus Group
Pulling information from a candidate’s resume to independently screen for accuracy with a host of domestic (or international) educational institutions can be a time-consuming and costly process. In the weeks that pass, more well-suited candidates could withdraw their resumes from consideration.
The Orsus Group offers comprehensive background screening services that provide your organization with a full picture of a candidate’s suitability for employment. Whether it’s education screening, professional certification screening, or international services to gather hard-to-find information about a candidate, we strive to help you make an informed choice for your organization. We want you to enjoy peace of mind about your decision and sustain high hiring standards that keep your organization legally protected and productive.
Ready to streamline your education screening process to find the best candidates quickly? Contact us today to let us know how we can support you.