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Recruiting workers from outside the UK has become harder since Brexit, but employers with skilled jobs are still looking for the best talent around the globe to fill vacancies. Despite this, a recent survey has shown that around half of the members of staff arriving from overseas have no background vetting at all, compared with three quarters of staff from the UK. As well as putting companies at risk of employing illegal workers, there are several other drawbacks to this strategy.

Right to Work

The main risk factor in employing staff from overseas is that they do not have the legal right to be in the UK in the first place or work here. The legal situation here is strange; it is not a legal requirement to check nationality of staff. However, it is illegal to employ illegal workers, so checking up on nationality and visa status has become the default position for most employers. If you don’t bother to check up on the status of your workers, you will have no defence as an employer if it is later found that the person is in the UK illegally. If you have checked and have proof that someone has showed you a forged or altered document, you will probably be able to avoid a fine.

Validating Qualifications

Every country around the world has a different education system and this is perhaps what is putting off employers from verifying degrees or school-leaving qualifications. Employers are put off doing this for many reasons: language barrier when trying to talk to schools or universities overseas, the time constraints, the general difficulty of knowing where to start in an unfamiliar qualification. But if you are employing for a position where the qualification is critical to someone’s success in the role, then there should be a process for checking properly.

References

Candidates who have recently arrived in the UK or are still overseas at the time of application will quite naturally give names and addresses of referees in their home country. If these referees don’t speak English, getting a reference can be tricky. Furthermore, other countries may have different laws and policies about what can be said in a reference for a job, and they have no obligation to comply with any requests from a British employer.

Contract Versus Permanent

The employment survey also highlighted a huge discrepancy between temporary or contract workers, and permanent employees. A much lower percentage of contractors were screened when compared with full-time staff. This situation has become even more muddy with the increase of remote working during the pandemic, where employers have not been able to meet with staff and verify identity in person. Many contractors wish to take on a job in the UK but work remotely from their home country. This situation is not unusual but can open up a whole can of worms in terms of tax liability, employed or self-employed status, and illegal working. Always get specialist legal or HR advice in these situations.

Although background screening or pre-employment checking are commonly used terms in private sector companies, governments and security jobs will often use the term vetting instead. In October 2020 the UK government issued new guidance, designed to let both applicants and recruiters within government know a bit more about the security vetting process.

Security vetting is all about minimising risks in government roles where security concerns have to be taken into consideration. This could mean a role which involves going into a high-risk site such as a power station or airport, a role which has access to classified documents or IT systems. The aim of vetting is to reassure employers that they can trust the people they are working with. Vetting in these situations is not something which is done once at the point of recruitment and then forgotten; departments will have an ongoing process of vetting on a regular basis for as long as someone holds a role which involves needing security clearance.

Delivering Vetting

Vetting is so important to the UK government that there is a special body set up to manage security vetting within government departments. This body is called United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) and is part of the Cabinet Office. There is lots of information online about the structure of the organisation and how they operate should you be interested in finding out more.

What Will They Ask For?

UKSV will ask applicants to complete a form giving basic personal details such as name, address, and date of birth, along with more information about your parents and siblings, an employment history, and address history. They will also ask about criminal convictions, similar to a DBS check in other situations. If your job involves a higher level of security clearance, they might also ask about your financial situation, and look more deeply into links with political or pressure groups which people may have links to.

Why Do They Need to Know All This?

The aim of the screening process is to minimise risk and maintain national security. When UKSV are undertaking the screening, they are not judging choices you may have made in the past or are looking for the right or wrong answers. However, in particular they are trying to get to the bottom of the following issues:

• Overseas residence – not necessarily a concern but could be if you have spent extended periods in countries which the UK has poor relations with.
• Spending – are you living beyond your means which could mean you make rash decisions to fund your lifestyle?
• Blackmail – without judgement, the UKSV wants to understand whether there is anything in your private life which could lead to you being blackmailed.
• Associations – even though you may not be considered any security risk yourself, are there any questionable characters among your friends and family who might influence you?

The UKSV also guarantees that the questions they ask will be relevant and reasonable given the position under consideration and will inform applicants in advance about the process.

There’s no shortage of jokes about lying on your CV, and the reason why most of us chuckle when we hear them is because we all know someone who’s inflated their GCSE grades or exaggerated their experience. It’s seen as fair game to embellish your CV, as long as it gets you the job. Employers know it goes on though, and surveys estimate that as many as 65% of CVs have mistruths on them. Some minor lies won’t matter; do you really care whether an applicant plays the piano or paints watercolours in their spare time? But other lies are more serious and spotting them is the key to effective recruitment.

Check Their Social Media

If you have any doubts about a candidate’s career history, a good place to look is somewhere like LinkedIn, or other social media sites. LinkedIn in particular is widely used by job hunters, and if you suspect that a candidate has created a job history or given themselves additional responsibilities, you can check to see whether their job history on LinkedIn matches what they are telling you. Many candidates are advised to keep work posts off their personal Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter feeds, but it’s still worth having a look to make sure there’s nothing which contradicts what they have said on their CV.

Mind the Gap

Candidates know that employers are suspicious about gaps on CVs without any explanation. Many will just adjust the periods of employment to cover gaps but many slip up, claiming to be employed by two companies at the same time, for example. Others will try to cover a gap by saying they were volunteering or travelling, so you should try to corroborate this. Gaps on a CV aren’t necessarily a problem – but lying about the reason for that gap might be.

Mismatch Between Education and Work History

If a candidate appears to have a degree in one subject, then has jumped between several positions in completely unrelated industries, then you should be suspicious. Of course, it’s possible to go from a Geology degree to a position in marketing then into banking and finally into civil engineering, but it’s not the norm. Don’t automatically write them off as a liar, but the jumping between several industries or doing jobs completely unrelated to their education is definitely something you might want to explore in depth at the interview stage.

Waffle and Unclear Language

People know that it’s wrong to lie on CVs, so will try to justify it to themselves by waffling, using lots of jargon or inserting buzzwords in the hope you’ll be impressed. But when the language used is unclear and non-specific, it can be impossible to work out what an employee actually did. Again, this is something which you definitely need to go into an interview, asking for specific examples of responsibility to get to the bottom of what someone did on a daily basis. A skilled interviewer should be able to pick up quickly if the candidate really did leaf a big team on a million-pound project, or not.

Security clearance can mean a lot of different things, but in the UK is generally used when dealing with jobs in defence and national security. These jobs are sensitive in nature and could involve being privy to secret information or national secrets. People employed to work in the Army, or in the control room of a nuclear power station have to be thoroughly checked out to make sure that they themselves don’t pose any risk to national security.

There are four different levels of security clearance, and the level required for each candidate will depend on the position under consideration, or their level within a given organisation. These are:

• Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) – the entry level, least detailed form of security checking.
• Security Check (SC)
• Counter-Terrorism Check (CTC)
• Developed Vetting (DV)

BPSS

BPSS is the standard pre-employment checking for people who are applying to work in government departments, even those who won’t have access to anything particularly sensitive. People applying for jobs which need BPSS clearance need a basic criminal records check, must prove their identity, satisfy the conditions of a right to work check, and be able to account for their employment history over the past three years. BPSS checks are usually only done once, when taking up your first government job.

SC

Security Check is a next step up in checking and is also sometimes known as national security vetting. You can’t apply for this sort of clearance on yourself; only your employer can apply for this on your behalf. Security clearance applies to contractors as well as to permanent employees. Employees will have the BPSS screening detailed above, but also a credit reference check, and will have to complete a questionnaire giving information about their friends, relatives and any political or pressure groups they may belong to.

Counter Terrorist Check

This clearance is used to check people who are going to be working in close proximity to public figures, for example in Parliament, or Buckingham Palace. Someone having CTC clearance will complete a range of screening forms, allowing the authorities to look into their background in some detail, including criminal records checks, security questionnaire and a MI5 questionnaire about your relatives too. Due to the in-depth nature of these checks, and the need to look into criminal records in some depth, roles requiring a counter terrorist check are usually restricted to people who have lived in the UK for at least three years.

Developed Vetting

This is the highest level of vetting, reserved for people who are going to be working with information classed as secret, or Top Secret. Developed vetting requires someone to have been in the UK for at least 9 years out of the previous 10, and to supply lots of information about their employment history, nationality, parents, spouse, and criminal records. A criminal record may not be a bar to passing clearance, as the authorities are more interested in whether the applicant, or their family appears in the security services information about radical groups or terrorism.

Every company will have its own approach to how they check up on people who are applying for jobs within their organisation. There are only a few situations in which employers have a legal obligation to screen candidates before hiring, so companies are free to make their own decisions about how to approach screening. The key concept which should be guiding this decision is called Risk Tolerance.

What’s the Risk in Recruiting?

When you stop to think about it, choosing the right person to join your organisation is a risky business. If you’re lucky, you could get a competent, professional person who brings new ideas and fits in perfectly with the rest of your team. However, get it wrong, and the consequences could be serious. You might get someone who has exaggerated their qualifications or experience, and just can’t do the job. Or even worse, someone who is actively trying to get a job in order to defraud your company. Screening can’t eliminate every risk, but certainly reduces the chances of getting it drastically wrong.

Assess the Potential Damage

Although the risk of getting the wrong person is damage to your company, not all positions carry the same level of risk. A very junior member of staff, who doesn’t have access to the company’s bank accounts and doesn’t deal with customers, has limited potential to cause damage if you get the decision wrong. Junior members of staff are also easier to replace. If, however you are recruiting for a more senior member of staff, it’s definitely worth the time and effort to conduct a thorough screen of their past.

What Should We Be Looking At?

There are lots of strategies which employers can use to check up on people who are applying for jobs. It’s important though to have a written policy about employment screening and apply this fairly to avoid accusations of discrimination. Some of the “quick-wins” in pre-employment screening are basics such as checking references by calling up previous employers to verify job titles and employment dates rather than relying on an emailed reference. If having a specific qualification is important for the role, it usually just takes a call or email to an exam board or professional body to check the claims are genuine.

Other checks are not so easy to arrange and will depend on the role under consideration. It is illegal, for example, to request an enhanced disclosure check on someone whose role does not involve anything known as regulated activity. Similarly, it would be hard to justify running a credit check on a worker who has no access to accounts or cash. Many employers choose to use an external screening company to help them decide what levels of screening are required for each role, to help you keep on the right side of the law, and strike the right balance between not checking enough, and spending money on an excessive level of checking given the responsibility.

It sounds like a riddle – when is a job offer not a job offer? Employers are increasingly carrying out a wide range of screening tests on staff before employing them, and it’s standard to make any job offer conditional on passing whatever tests the employer wishes to put in place. Most often, these conditional offers are associated with criminal records checks or DBS checks; if your disclosure certificate shows up criminal convictions then you know you’re not getting the job. But what about the other background checks, can employers withdraw an offer if they’re not happy with what they find?

Employer Procedure

The short answer to whether an offer can be withdrawn is yes – as long as you’ve made it clear to the applicant what checking you will be doing, and that something coming up on a background check could lead to the job offer being withdrawn. This can cause issues for applicants, who may have handed in their notice at their previous employer. But as long as you have told them your policy, legally you are in the clear.

Conditional Offers

It is up to the individual employer to decide what conditions they wish to impose on employment. Nearly all job offers will include a paragraph about offers being subject to satisfactory references. Many jobs will require a DBS check, but other checks may apply too. Given the high number of people who tell lies or exaggerate facts on their CV, it’s becoming increasingly common for an employer to fact check everything, and should you discover that an applicant has tweaked their A-level grades, or claimed false responsibilities or experience, you are well within your rights as an employer to withdraw their employment offer. The other important thing to note as an employer is that the applicant has the right to ask you why you have withdrawn their offer – but you also have the right not to tell them the specifics. A standard statement about failing pre-employment checks is sufficient, legally.

This is often a judgement call. The employer will look at the information which you have provided them, and what has been revealed on background screening. They can then decide whether, on balance, they still wish to employ you. An employer may decide to overlook a slight exaggeration about past work experience, but don’t have to.

Right to Work

One of the key checks which employers have no discretion over is the right to work checks. This is a legal requirement, set out by government. Employers have to check whether the people they are employing are legally allowed to live and work in the UK. If you can’t show them the correct proof, then they will have no choice but to withdraw your offer. Usually, employers will ask to see a valid passport as proof of your nationality. If you don’t have a passport, look online to see which other documentation can be accepted instead. Employers won’t risk employing you without seeing your documents as fines for illegal workers can be up to £20k per worker.

If you run a small or medium sized business, you will be well aware how busy your HR department can be, dealing with everything from disciplinaries to payroll. Often, pre-employment checks and screening can fall towards the bottom of the priority list, which means the checks are rushed or just overlooked altogether. Could outsourcing the checks to an external provider be the answer? We think it could be, and here are the ten key advantages of handing the responsibility over to someone else.

Time Saving

Doing background checking thoroughly and properly takes time. Pulling lots of data together from different sources can be a full-time job for someone. Deciding to outsource your pre-employment checks frees up your staff to turn their attention to other tasks.

Eliminate Bias

External background checkers don’t know your company and haven’t met the candidate at interview. They can therefore base their recommendations purely on the facts in front of them, rather than on impressions formed when meeting the candidate.

Compliance

Screening companies should be up to speed with the latest legislation around employment law and ensure that your checks are done legally and properly.

Quick Turnaround

Companies which do nothing, but background checking should have a streamlined process and efficient ways of working. They should be able to do things quicker than a HR department which is doing a range of different tasks simultaneously.

Expertise

People who run background checks as a profession develop a level of expertise and knowledge which isn’t achievable for someone who is trying to do background checking alongside a lot of other responsibilities too. Experienced screeners can also advise on the most appropriate strategy for your company and industry.

Data Protection

Compliance with data protection rules regarding processing data isn’t optional, and it’s easy to get things wrong. Using an external company should help you ensure that you are complying with your obligations under the law.

Software and Automation

Many screening companies have invested heavily in specialist software which allows automated screening, quickly and more efficiently. Often, the software is too expensive for smaller companies to invest in.

Privacy

Some applicants aren’t comfortable with having someone they are potentially going to work with seeing all of their personal details, criminal record or references. It may be reassuring for candidates to know that their checking is being done off-site, by a separate organisation, with staff who they will never meet or have to work with.

Accurate Results

Everyone makes mistakes, but most screening providers have put measures in place to guarantee that the information they provide is accurate and correct. This should reassure both recruiters and candidates, knowing that mistakes shouldn’t be made.

Minimisation of Risk

Using a screening company is the ultimate in peace of mind for your business. Choosing to use a professional screener is taking the best steps to eliminate the remote possibility that someone with a criminal record or dishonest character gets a job within your company and does untold damage to your reputation and finances.

If you are running one of the many companies which is starting to delve deeper into the background of people applying for positions, should you have a written policy on it? Most HR organisations agree that background screening is a positive step which companies can take to minimise the risk of employing someone who is at best unsuitable for the position, and at worst, a risk to colleagues or the company’s finances. But it’s important to have a written policy to make sure that any screening is done fairly and ensures that the company is not discriminating against any applicants based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics.

Purpose and Scope

The first thing your screening policy should contain is a statement on purpose and scope. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy; it’s merely a statement about why you are carrying out background screening, and what you will be looking at during your vetting process.

Organisational Responsibility

This section of the policy should detail who is responsible for carrying out the screening. Many organisations choose to use an external company to do this work for them, so it’s important to let staff know if this is what you intend to do. If you are screening in house, it’s best practice to name an individual, or at least a position such as HR Director, as the person with overall control of the process.

Legal Parameters

The policy should also mention that some background checks have to be completed for legal reasons. In the UK this includes a Right to Work check to confirm someone’s nationality and eligibility to work in the UK. Other positions, usually in healthcare or working with children, may need a disclosure, or criminal records check. The policy should contain a statement about clearly stating which positions require a criminal record check in vacancy notices.

Detail the Process

A good policy should also go into a bit of detail about how screening will be done. This should lay out which checks will be carried out, whether screening will be done once at recruitment or repeated at a certain interval, which positions are eligible for screening, and what criteria could lead to someone being rejected after an adverse screening result.

Avoiding Discrimination

Once you’ve written your policy on employment screening – and you can download a template to customise if you don’t want to start from scratch – the next step is to make sure that everyone involved in the process is aware of the policy and what is contained within it. Any policy on screening must be applied across the board, whoever the person is applying for the position. Obviously, deciding just to screen men, or people living in a certain postcode, could lead to accusations of discrimination. But it would also be unfair to not follow the process for someone known to the employer, or who has been referred by an employment agency. Keep all paperwork relating to screening and background checking so you can justify your decisions.

Employers can see how tempting it is for employees to tell a few white lies on their CV. Giving yourself a team leader position when you were just a team member, tweaking A-level grades, extending employment periods to cover gaps. Who’s going to notice and why does it matter? Most candidates aren’t aware that in the UK, lying on your CV falls under the remit of “fraud by false misrepresentation” and is classed as a crime. Many employees who are dismissed after their lies are discovered try to claim that they just made a mistake when completing their application but legally, that makes no difference.

Grade Checking

Qualifications are one of the most lied about things on a CV, and so increasingly employers are checking. Most won’t ask for proof of every qualification, just the highest or most recent qualification, or ones which are critical to the position under consideration. If you have forgotten what grades you got in your A-levels, don’t guess. Just put that you have passes in subjects and if the employer requires more detail, you can ask for replacement certificates at a later date. Don’t ever be tempted to claim membership of a professional body which you don’t have, as it just takes one phone call from your employer to the professional organisation concerned to verify your claims.

Consequences Of Lying on CVs

Most people lie on their CVs because they think they will get away with it. But along with not getting the job, there are many other consequences to being less than honest. Some of these are:

• Embarrassment at Interview – If you say you’re fluent in Spanish, and the interviewer greets you in Spanish and asks about your journey, how will you respond? Also, being quizzed on specific aspects of a job you’ve never done will just leave you feeling embarrassed and out of your depth at interview.
• Removed from Process – probably the main consequence of lying on your CV is that you’ll be asked to leave the interview process, or any existing job offer is rescinded.
• Blacklisting – Major employers don’t appreciate having their time wasted by people lying on CVs and then being caught out. Many will operate an unofficial “blacklist” of people who have been caught out and will refuse to ever consider them for another position in the future. This can hugely hamper your job prospects if you live in an area with just one or two large employers. If you’ve landed the interview through an agency, then they are unlikely to want to work with you again in the future.
• Dismissal -if your lies come to light after you’ve started work, then this is classed as gross misconduct and usually means instant sacking. How are you going to explain that on your CV going forward?

The best advice is clear – don’t tell fibs on your CV. If you’re caught out, the consequences can be severe. If you’re unsure of grades or job titles, state that in your application rather than guessing.

It’s common knowledge that many employers will Google a candidate’s name, or search for them on Facebook to decide whether they are the sort of person who fits with their company. What’s perhaps less known is that a 2017 survey revealed that 36% of employers in the UK discounted a candidate because of what they saw on their Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn profile. But what should employers be looking for on candidates’ social media profiles?

Adverse Social Media Activity

Most employers will say that they are looking for adverse social media activity, but what does this mean in practical terms? HR departments who are screening social media sites will have a range of things they are looking for, but these will include:

• Anything which contradicts information or claims which someone has made on their CV or application form
• Derogatory posts about a former employer, their business, or colleagues
• Inappropriate language
• Extreme views or political opinions
• Posts showing illegal or offensive behaviour

How Far Back Do They Look?

Again, the approach taken will vary from employer to employer, and even within one employer depending on the job. Most employers recognise that the main social media sites allow anyone over the age of 13 to have an account and that it’s probably not fair to judge someone in their 20s over a post they put online as a 14 or 15-year-old. Most will only look at posts from the age of 18, or just have a blanket policy of looking at posts going back a year.

Social Media Screening as Part of the Recruitment Process

Social media screening is cheap and simple and can easily be done in house. Usually, media screening takes place at an early stage of the process before interviews. This means that members of staff are not wasting time in interviewing someone who later turns out to be unsuitable. From a candidate’s point of view, if you are often missing out on interviews for positions which you have the experience and qualifications to do, could that be down to what employers are seeing on your Twitter feed or Facebook wall?

Should You Clean Up Your Social Media Profile?

If you’re in the job market, it’s worth knowing what employers are looking for, and making sure that there’s nothing on your social media profiles which could call your character into question. Many employers recommend the “grandma” test – any posts which you wouldn’t be happy for your granny to see probably aren’t the sort of thing you’d want your employer to see either. All social media sites will let you go back through your feed and remove any posts which you feel are perhaps inappropriate. Think also what you’re posting on other people’s feeds, or what sort of replies you are posting to brands or company feeds.

Another option of course is to make yourself impossible to find on social media, if you are uncomfortable with the idea that other people might trawl through your feed. Adopt a pseudonym, misspell your name, or switch your first and middle names, and delete your profile picture too.