How it Works – Verifiers

The most prized asset of any organisation is its people. Organisations spend a huge amount of time, money, and effort trying to find and recruit the right people, implement the right recruitment processes and find the right recruiters and human resources/managers to verify the credentials of candidates.

Even with the assistance of specialist verification agencies, organisations often find they have recruited candidates that have misrepresented or even falsified their educational credentials or work experience.

The market size for verifications continues to expand and is expected to approach $5 Billion in size by 2025. The corresponding occupational fraud will be at least $4.7 trillion. KPMG, one the big four accounting firms worldwide, is at the forefront of organisations performing background verification services around the world.

Even so, these trusted worldwide agencies frequently find themselves on the back foot when their screening services are revealed to be inaccurate. This has the potential to lead to a loss of trust and business relationships with organisations moving away to employ other verification agencies.

The tricks used by those wishing to deceive a potential employer are many and varied and unfortunately the use of older, more error-prone technologies in many universities does not improve the situation.  Paper-based certificates provided by candidates may be spoofed copies created by so-called “diploma mills”. Additionally, the inability of verification agency staff performing the physical verification work on a university visit may also be problematic. In some cases, these people may never satisfactorily complete their task.

Another major factor is the amount of time is takes to perform even the most basic verification process. Even though a university have a web portal dedicated to the process of verification, there is always the possibility that university staff may not be able to respond in a timely manner.  A response time of between 3 to 15 days for a response to be returned would not be considered unusual.  In such cases, even a deserving candidate may lose the opportunity due to the lack of response or proper verification. This is more relevant for universities that do not usually find themselves in the top bracket, but which can critically impact their reputational standing.  Unfortunately, the cost of employing more people, especially when verification agencies are involved, is a particularly expensive affair.

Top recruitment agencies state that around 10 to 20 per of the resumes they receive contain some form of misrepresentation. This could take the form of a fake certificate, or possibly, a deliberate falsification of data. One of the key challenges faced by verification agencies is this increase in fake certificates. With the proliferation of diploma mills worldwide there are a lot of fake certificates out there which look increasing like the real thing.  There is a significant need in the market for a digital solution that transform the verification process and can authenticate certificates instantly.