Many fraud candidates falsify their resumes, documents, qualifications, as well as the their designations and last working day with their previous organisations. A thorough background check should include all of these but must pay special focus on the verifying their last working day.
But why do job-seekers falsify their last working day?
Employment concerns around employees’ ‘last working day fraud’
Generally, job-seekers lie about their last working day in their previous organisation to conceal gaps of unemployment or dismissal for their inability to perform, incompetence, improper conduct, abuse and violence towards fellow employees or theft.
Another purpose is to conceal a time of imprisonment so that they can be secure in their ability to find work quickly when they are released.
Another common reason potential employees lie about their last working day is to conduct intellectual property or data theft. In our years of experience of doing Employee Background Verifications, we have found several Last Working Day discrepancies involving a new employee still working with a direct competitor of the company. This puts the new employer at serious jeopardy with respect to their client knowledge, financial data, and confidential information.
How often does this last working day fraud occur?
The ‘Last Working Day’ fraud is a type that decreases higher up the organisational hierarchy. In fact, it’s almost non-existent at C-level positions. However, it is not uncommon at lower and middle managerial levels.
As per our internal research we have observed that candidates applying for non-managerial positions are twice as likely to misrepresent their credentials compared to the ones applying for managerial positions.
What is even more interesting to observe is that the highest number of discrepancies is observed in the sales & business development function irrespective of the industry.
Why is it necessary to check a potential employee’s last working day?
We believe that it is of utmost importance to check the last working day of potential employees while conducting background verifications.
While it might seem like an insignificant detail, it could be dangerous for an organisation to hire someone without their last day being checked and verified. For example, suppose you recruit a job-seeker from a competing organisation. In that case, it is important to make sure that the person has fulfilled all exit formalities before given access to your business plans, proprietary information, technical information, company database, intellectual property, processes and customer information.
A thorough verification of this information will ensure that he/she is not trading or selling that information. This is particularly significant in software companies, where data and intellectual property are the organisation’s most valuable assets.
At IDfy, we help companies build honest and high performing teams by preventing identity and employment fraud in just six steps. These steps also include instant tampering identification, real-time data extraction, and comprehensive verifications—address checks, education, employment, police and court record checks, fraud database, and real-time ID check in our fake company database.
It makes sense to take every reasonable step to keep employees, customers, and clients safe – even if it means delayed background verification. Doing so before the digital onboarding stage will help your company save on multiple resources.
If you would like to experience our Employee Verification Solution, you can watch a demo video here and schedule a meeting here.