Screening – The Importance Of An Independent Approach

14/05/2010

By Anne Beitel, Managing Director, Executives Online

Before presenting candidates to their clients for consideration, recruitment agencies will frequently carry out a number of candidate background checks to ensure no irregularities exist. However, this approach is open to accusations of partiality, whereas an independent approach to screening offers the surety of an objective process and the removal of potential conflicts of interest.

Linking the recruitment fee to the successful placement ensures "pay for performance" and good value for money for clients of recruitment businesses. However, by conducting their own pre-employment screening of candidates, some recruitment agencies are placing...

...themselves in a very difficult position. Agencies will of course be motivated to ensure that they can accomplish the placement and provide a candidate who is able not only to meet the needs of the business, but can make a positive impact. If something which could potentially damage their chance of completing such a placement were to present itself through the background checks, could the agency be trusted to in fact disclose the information and therefore risk the chance of them losing their all important fee? Of course it isn't always the case that agencies would behave unethically, but it certainly places them in a conflicted situation.

The ramifications of ignoring for instance, where someone has deliberately misrepresented themselves by way of their CV cannot be underestimated. Regardless of the position in question, employing inadequately trained or under experienced staff can be costly, not only creating disharmony amongst the team but lowering morale as others have to cover for another's weaknesses. In the worst case of misrepresentation the organisation's reputation can be brought in to question; data security threatened and even fraudulent behaviour encountered. Following a survey of 3,800 CV's in early 2008,... continued on page two >

 

 

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