Recently I saw a question from an HR professional in one of the popular HR forums – whether background checks should be done to verify the work experience of a candidate coming from a teaching / academic environment. This can be expanded to cover other spheres outside of the private or for-profit industry including government, NGOs, research institutes and even religious and cultural institutions.
I think that the doubt stems from the fact that some of these non-private industry entities may not be doing background verification on their current employees and also it may be tough to get employment verifications done from them. So it may be an easy way out just to assume that the claimed employment is correct and to NOT do any further verification.
This assumption represents a very serious breach in the organizational policy for background checks. These checks should be applied uniformly across any type of work experience. In fact, it is even more important to undertake stringent work experience checks when a candidate DOES NOT belong to private or for-profit industry. Some of the more intelligent and crafty candidates may claim employment in such domains because they know that it is quite tough to get formal verifications from such organizations.
So the best practice would be to apply the same rigor for employment background checks across any sector or domain and to let the specialists in a professional background verification agency to do the job for you.
