The true charity is not giving bread or money, but providing employment. — Ilkin Santak
From all the quotes out there on employment, this one stands the tallest, brightest and strongest. Not only because of its empathetic nature but because of its authenticity.
Employment has always been the fuel for growth. And it will always be. Human Effort brings growth. The definition of employment has changed over time, but the underlying meaning has never changed.
It’s asking someone to work for a cause in return for a future.
While employing, there are challenges that every one of the recruiters out there would resonate with — coming across people who would lie to you to get a position and be employed.
The severity of the offense depends on the position in question. If you are recruiting a brain surgeon and find out that the candidate is faking an experience, it is dangerous.
But, if you are recruiting for an entry-level executive position and find that some credentials are false, you can afford some empathy and talk to the candidate. Understand why this has happened and help them candidate realize this is not acceptable. But rectifiable none the less.
The chances of you finding someone faking credentials at the brain surgeon level are close to zero. But you would find people faking it at other areas and levels.
We at SpringVerify come across such cases all the time. For all these cases, we usually prescribe a dose of generosity and empathy to the proceedings.
This is the reason I love the above quote — employment is generosity at every level.
For the most part, anyone faking credential is just trying to get the position. Sure it is malicious and should be tackled with care. But, an alternate approach could land you a candidate who could look like Michael Ross from the Suits series, minus the legal part.
Ross, even though being a genius, fakes it to get a high stakes job at a law firm. Gets caught, yet becomes the most valuable employee the firm had seen in years.
So, here are few tips you can keep in mind to make sure everyone comes out winning in such scenarios.
First, be sure!
The first step, without doubt, should always be to double-check the facts. Finding out if your source of information is legit about the fake credentials of a candidate is crucial.
You wouldn’t want to start a conversation and find midway that you were wrong about the situation. Embarrassing won’t cut it if you find yourself there. Be doubly sure!
This is why we double and sometimes triple check red flags once we find any on a candidate. In most cases, we would initiate an entirely new round of verification on such candidates, to be sure.
Talk to the candidate. With empathy.
We always encourage a conversation between the candidate and the employer to post every check. If the checks come out clean, the conversation would encourage the start of a professional relationship and team building.
And if the checks come out with red flags, the conversation is even more warranted. The discussion should revolve around how to correct the wrong and not around why it happened.
Try to understand why the candidate falsified the information and try to relate to any of your previous hiring conversations. This would help you bring in perspective and find the strengths in the candidate. It could be the persuasiveness of the candidate, or the diligence, or the effort.
Try to evaluate how the same candidate could fit in with the team keeping in mind the offense. Make sure you find a position you could offer and then try to visualize if the candidate would fit in, with adequate checks in place of course.
Find out a win-win scenario
A hiring process is a costly one. There is time invested by every employer for every candidate who gets to the stage of background checks. The time invested is money invested.
Understand that if the candidate reached a stage of being hired, the merit is undeniable. And try to evaluate if a win-win scenario is possible here. Similar to what Harvey worked with Mike in Suits.
Realize that it is still an experiment and that you might have to redo the entire hiring process later if the candidate turns out to be not-at-par. But, this could also be a chance for the candidate to prove the worth and might exceed your expectations.
This happens all the time. You have done it with people who you thought might not make the cut for a position, yet you took a chance. It might have worked and might have failed. It is similar.
Just weigh in the pros and cons and sway intentionally towards the side of advantages.
About SpringVerify
SpringVerify is the modern take on the age-old problem of employee verification being costly, tedious, and out of reach of small businesses. We are trying to build a platform where the employee verification process happens seamlessly and with minimal effort required from both the company and the employee.
We believe that employee verification is a must for any business. It is a critical process in ensuring that every employee working with you is faithful and could be trusted. CareerBuilder survey shows that a company stands to lose on average $17000 on a wrong hire. Read more here.
We have built the platform with blockchain and believe that it will change virtually everything it comes in contact with. Blockchain helps us in building a decentralized system that keeps all our data secure and immutable. Read more here.