The arrest of an impersonator who used stolen documents to land jobs in well-known companies just exposes how lightly we take Employee verification. What makes this point even more glaring in this case is that the imposter was known in his neighbourhood by his real identity but his organizations had no clue that he was parading as a different person. If only the organizations had undertaken thorough background verification they wouldn’t have been caught napping, thus exposing themselves to a great risk. A fraudster in an organization is like a bomb ticking to go off. An unscrupulous employee can resort to forgery, financial impropriety, steal data and/or commit other criminal activities.
When large projects come knocking, human resource business partners typically tend to hire in haste to fill job vacancies with competency matching candidates, without rigorous scrutiny of their documents. This is especially true for the Information Technology sector where data shows that a large pool of job aspirants fake their qualification documents. Again, for lower functional positions, companies often dispense with background checks, leading to numerous accounts of junior level employees decamping with company funds, billing for material without delivering, reporting false sales data, passing information to competition etc.
While filling vacancies in time and competency expertise in candidates is much desirable, you cannot afford to shut your eyes to integrity issues. It is time for companies to understand that no expense is greater than the cost of fraud and loss of face. By proper verification, you can save precious reputation and manage operational risk.
