Many companies of all sizes are interested in the opportunities that remote work provides - whether it's access to an expanded talent pool or cost savings. Upwork’s Future Workforce Report (2021) estimates that more than 40 million Americans will be working remotely in the next five years. As remote work demand continues to grow, employment verification methods, such as varying a person’s degrees and education level will need to adapt and evolve to catch up.
An embarrassing history of education fabrication
When the board of directors at Yahoo approved the hiring of Scott Thompson as the company’s new chief executive in 2012, they thought they had acquired a forthright guy - according to one anonymous board member quoted in The New York Times story about the undoing of their CEO.
Thompson’s resume stated that he held a Bachelor's degree in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College in Massachusetts–there was only one problem: Stonehill didn’t offer Computer Science as a major when Thompson was a student there. Yahoo stock dropped 3.4% as soon as the news of Thompson’s deception went public. Thompson never explained why he lied on his resume - but records show he had claimed to have a Computer Science degree years earlier as President of PayPal.
In today’s hiring landscape, with the highlights of everyone’s life being only a few Google search clicks away, it would be easy to assume that lying about things like education background would be less prevalent - that is unfortunately not the case.
Hiring and social media: what you should know
More recruiters and HR departments are referencing LinkedIn profiles to qualify job candidates. A recruiter nation survey in 2020 found that 48% of large companies with more than 500 employees are expected to increase recruiting activities on LinkedIn.
This is not surprising; LinkedIn provides a convenient way to connect with potential hires and some businesses even let job seekers apply over the social media platform. However, for all of the hiring advantages LinkedIn provides, there is one major drawback that anyone involved in the hiring process should know: 34% of LinkedIn users admitted to lying on their profiles (LendEDU, 2020) and 78% of people admitted to lying specifically to get a job (Checkster, 2020).
The quality of LinkedIn profiles could be vastly improved by including a check mark next to the education listed on a person’s profile, if it's been verified. This would be a frictionless, instant way to check someone’s claims without requiring human intervention or an invasion of privacy.
Bad hires can cost businesses a lot
The average cost of a bad hire in 2022 can be as high as 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, finding out that a new hire’s credentials are fraudulent after onboarding is a mistake that companies cannot afford to make often.
Additionally, the cost of losing out on good candidates, due to a lengthy and complex background check process, can also hurt a businesses future earning potential.
There's a better way to verify a job candidate’s background
Technology has advanced to the point of making the verification methods used by the most common background check services outdated. Current methods often rely heavily on human inputs and can take up to 30 days to return results. In a competitive job market, this is too slow to land top talent who don’t want to wait a month between an interview and an offer. Making matters worse, when mistakes turn up in the information provided, the process takes even longer.
Current API technology could be used to directly connect to a school’s database and instantly verify a person’s degree or enrollment status. This method would actually be less of an invasion of privacy than the current call and form-based background check system.
The cost and stress savings of this pivot for employers would be massive. The world of work has already changed and hiring mistakes continue to be a costly headache for companies of all sizes.
This needed shift in the hiring process would be welcomed by both job seekers and the company's looking to hire. In a competitive job market, with the current gaps of verification, the temptation to lie for a higher potential salary is simply too great for many to pass up. Technology can help save someone from themselves, while honoring the honest.
Employers are willing to pay for better verification methods
Digital verification is a booming industry. Recent studies show spend on identity verification technology will exceed 20 billion globally by 2027.
With almost every industry suffering from a lack of highly skilled workers, education verification will be an important piece of this spending–but it will actually cost less than the current analog methods used to verify a person’s degree and experience.
Better API’s have increased the speed of accurate verification, while also reducing its cost.
As soon as the platforms offering these next gen solutions are widely known, the new standard will be verifications in under 30 seconds (not 30 days) for a few dollars per verification. With improved accuracy, lower cost, less invasions of privacy, and frictionless integrations, why would employers settle for anything less?
