As employers continue to embrace remote work, talent pools no longer have geographic boundaries. While this increases access to skills and helps to ease the challenges of a candidate-short market, it also heightens the need for certainty of identity.
In 2020/21, there were 154,300 identity thefts in Australia and 226,000 in the UK in 2021 alone. And this only accounts for those reported to authorities. It’s a growing problem. So, how do you know who you are really talking to?
If you only speak to a candidate over Zoom, verifying their identity and that of their referees becomes even more critical. In fact, candidate impersonation is on the rise and can have disastrous impacts.
And it affects all industries. Many Australians would recall the 2019 case where a government department hired a fraudulent candidate for a senior position, paying her $33,000 in wages before the deception was uncovered.
You view an application, a resume and a cover letter and then comes the video interview. The candidate presents well, but how do you know they are who they say they are? Building identity verification into your hiring process from the outset makes sense in today’s digital world. It’s simply due diligence.
Maybe the candidate is using their real identity, but are their referees? Fraudulent references are more common than you might think, and the results can be costly.
Most people can find two referees to say positive things about them, so if they are resorting to fraud, it means there is a real problem you need to know about upfront.
Beyond the cost, time and frustrations of rehiring, what potential damage could a fraudulent new hire do before you find out the truth? Would you be putting them in front of your clients? Giving them access to your data and systems? Or even leaving vulnerable people in their care?
The wrong hire is disastrous for any organisation and can be life-threatening in industries like health care and community services, where the stakes are even higher.
As a leading online reference and background checking platform, Referoo has kept pace with the growing need for identity verification and fraud detection tools.
Now, alongside our existing fraud detection tools, we’re ready to launch a game-changing solution for HR and recruiters who are serious about the certainty of identity.
Referoo’s groundbreaking biometric identity verification feature will launch in late September and allow candidates and referees to verify their identity in just a few minutes, using only their smartphones.
Follow us on LinkedIn or contact Referoo to learn more about this exciting innovation that will put you on the front foot when it comes to recruitment fraud.