Businesses failing to conduct pre-employment checks

Businesses that do not take pre-employment processes seriously create a risk of financial and reputational damage.  A recent survey report has established the annual cost of recruitment fraud to UK businesses as £23.9 billion.

The research conducted CV checks of over 5,000 employees andfound that 20% used inflated job titles and 12% falsified exam grades.

Recruitment fraud is a serious problem for all types of business. Misleading information on a CV is often seen as little more than a ‘white lie’ but it can lead to bigger financial and reputational costs if the business has recruited on the strength of one of those “white lies”.

The most common recruitment fraud experienced by organisations was false qualifications, followed by fabricated references, use of false or fabricated documents and exaggerated grades.

It is important to confirm that employees have achieved what they say they have. Otherwise recruits can be engaged into roles where they are out of their depth and the only way to survive is to break the rules or manipulate numbers, therefore, basic checks are recommended to establish that information provided is legitimate.