Human resources management should attempt to verify a potential employee's qualifications and to contact past employers for references before offering someone a job. There is also the need to comply with some legal obligations, such as ensuring that employees are suitably qualified to perform the job.
You can ask job applicants to provide the names and contact details of referees who can give you an opinion on the applicant's suitability for employment.
Referees are typically the applicant's past employers, but can also be people who know the applicant in some other capacity, such as teachers or club committee members. Past employers can provide valuable information about the skills, job performance and the reliability of job applicants.
You only need to conduct checks if you are seriously considering employing the person, so it is only necessary to do so only after other stages of the recruitment process, such as interviews and short-listing have occurred.
You need to be aware of some security and privacy issues as well.
Four types of information applicants may present
- Written letters by previous employers that set out details of previous employment – but note that no applicant will show you a letter that isn’t favourable. After requesting authority, you should contact the person who signed the letter to discuss the contents.
- Documentary evidence of qualifications, such as degrees, trades certificates, work permits orvarious licences. You need to verify that these documents are genuine.
- Certificates of service issued by previous employers. These merely confirm objective details of previous employment (dates, job titles and little else).
- Personal or character references, written by acquaintances of the applicant. They are often of little relevance and false names etc are easy to do. However, in cases such as school leavers who have little or no previous work experience, they may be helpful.
Where a particular qualification is mandatory for legal reasons, it is essential to ensure that it is validly held. The obvious example is being legally allowed to work in Australia, for which applicants may present copies of birth certificates, passports or work permits. The other documents that must be verified are licences or certificates that the employee must have in order to perform the work, such as a current driver's licence.
There are legal consequences of wrongly employing someone as a result of not making these checks. Apart from legal issues, a person with a history of unreliability, chronic absenteeism, dishonesty or personality clashes with others in previous jobs is fairly likely (although not guaranteed) to continue that behaviour pattern in your business, with obvious costs.
What to look for
Apart from verifying information, you need to check with referees for issues such as the following:
- informed comments from people who have managed or worked closely with the applicant about his/her quality of work, how he/she handled particular issues at work, suitability for the job vacancy and personal attributes relevant to work (such as reliability, timekeeping/absenteeism, initiative)
- evidence of recurring patterns in relation to work performance and attributes
- further information that may answer questions or 'gaps' in information that became apparent during other stages of the recruitment/selection processes
- clarification of any apparent discrepancies in the information presented so far, such as conflicting dates in different documents, how past 'remuneration' was defined or ambiguities in job titles
- further investigation of isolated issues and events, to place them in proper context
- verification of the employee’s real reasons for leaving the previous job
- whether the previous employer would be willing to re-employ the person – and if not, why not?
This article originally appeared on the Ask Us How website. NSW Business Chamber Members can access this site, which features hundreds of practical articles and other resources to help you manage and grow your business.
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