THE VALUE OF REFERENCE CHECKS IN THE HIRING PROCESS

Winston Churchill once said, “We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” This quote can be suitably applied to the recruitment processes being conducted in today’s fast paced era. A lot of unsuitable candidates are getting hired despite the strong and reliable recruitment arrangements in big and small companies.

What’s the Reason?

From the company’s CEO to the Recruiting Managers, HR professionals and Interviewers, everybody is aware of the fact that the number of skilled labourers are becoming obsolete with the growing number of job applicants and the availability of genuine and talented professionals is dissolving by the day in the growing pool of mediocre workforce.

This is due to the fact that most of the candidates sometimes have the required degrees but not suitable skills, knowledge and aptitude desired for the profile and vice-versa. So, at this stage, it becomes a harrowing and distressing task to find the right candidates from the heaps of resumes lying at your desk.

This makes it easy for some shrewd candidates to grab the limited job opportunities by misrepresenting the truth through their resume and personal interview. As a result, an employee with a wrong past or forged paperwork is hired which can lead to huge losses for the company.

Solution

The good news is that there is a solution to ensure that the person you have sorted out, based on his/her impressive resume, mark sheets, documents, and the impactful performance in the interviews is in reality the right person or not.

REFERENCE CHECKS, is the only solution in such situation. Reference Checks helps the recruiters in identifying the actual strengths and weaknesses before hiring the candidates to make sure that the company benefits from the candidates’ performance, instead of incurring huge losses for the companies by hiring wrong candidates during the mass recruitments, especially for the IT companies.

Reference checks help you uncover the true story of the potential future employee of your organization. This can be done by obtaining independent information about the candidate by contacting the employers or managers of their previous company or by inquiring about his/her academic performance from his passed out university or college.

The Process of Reference Checks

Now the most pertinent question lingering in your mind would be that how these reference checks must be carried out.

The medium through which the reference checks are carried out generally depends on the comfort level of the person at the other end. Some professionals or managers don’t find it appropriate to give the information regarding their ex-employee in writing. So, in such cases the reference checks can be carried out via digital means such as mobile, email, fax, or simply in person, to ensure confidentiality.

Another growing trend of conducting reference checks is outsourcing the responsibility of verification to a third party. However, this process has only proven to be effective if either the alliance between the third party and the parent company is a trusted one or if the information you are seeking is shared clearly beforehand by giving a proper list of questions to be asked.

Importance of Reference Checks

In today’s era of modern education system where the coaching institutes dominate the education system, there is a crash course offered for acquiring almost any skill which can help the students in attaining the most sought after white-collar job. Thus, as a result, there are many courses that teach “hacks” and “techniques” to ace the interview and with a bit of practice candidates can master these skills. But, through reference checks, the picture becomes crystal clear as overall assessment of the candidate is possible.

Embellishment of CVs has become very common these days and thus employers can timely identify a forged resume with the help of reference checks. Reference Checks help in saving up a lot of valuable time and money by ensuring that the deserving candidates are hired, which can lead to prevention of huge losses for the company and thus helps the companies in sustaining their brand value and market position. The recruiters and HR professionals can acquire additional information about the candidate regarding behavior, character traits, habits, social skills, temperament, etc. which makes the hiring process much more hassle-free.

It is a major led down for the recruiting team and HRs when the performance of the hired candidate is in stark contradiction to the experience shown in the CV. The similar case also happens when candidates perform poorly in the interview after excelling in the first screening round. All these differences can be bridged together by conducting reference checks to ensure that only the perfectly fit candidate gets to handle the job responsibilities. The reason for leaving the past position of the previous company can also be brought under the scanner and can be analyzed to get an idea of the stability of candidate.

Reference Checks, to an extent, reduce the pressure on the recruiters for hiring right candidates as it is a hefty task to recruit a person with accuracy on basis of the two minute assessment of interview. Moreover, Reference Checks also create an Equipoise in the company.

Why Companies avoid Reference Checks?

Many companies do not understand the vitality of the reference checks and often skip the process due to many reasons:

Lack of Training

Hectic HR Schedules

Lack of Awareness

Negligent Attitude

Social Awkwardness

As a result, if you want to partner with The Principle Group, India’s #1 RPO Company, for your talent acquisition needs, you can hire the best recruitment outsourcing services that conduct Reference Checks and comprehend their significance.