Background Checks: How Do You Spot Genuine Experience with Fake Job Titles?

Dear All, During background verification, can you identify candidates who have genuine experience but present fake roles on their resumes? For example, a candidate may claim to have three years of experience in the sales department of a retail organization but list experience in the IT department of the same organization.

Please note that a relieving letter may not disclose your designation or department.

Regards,
Vignesh

Thank you for your reply. I am working as an HR professional in a mid-sized IT company. We are currently recruiting for the position of a business analyst in the banking domain. I often come across candidates from banks with experience in retail sales but presenting themselves as internal business analysts. Is there a way to identify these candidates effectively?

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or strategies to address this issue.

Thank you.

You can always ask for the service certificate from the previous employer, in which an employee's designation, department, DOJ, DOL, and CTC details are captured.

Also, you can validate the actual profile of the candidate by speaking to the HR and his/her direct reporting manager.

Regards,
Priya

I agree with Priya, and you also have the option of "Reference." You can check with the contacts/reference provided by employees. Also, you can get the reality of a candidate during an interview by asking them to describe their job profile/KRA. Tricky questions can also help you determine whether the employee holds a genuine profile or a fake one. Only genuinely experienced candidates will be able to answer you because of a universal truth: it is not possible to lie with fake experience or demonstrate as experienced so easily, which requires very strong confidence. Only an experienced person can show his/her good confidence while describing JDs/KRAs during an interview.

I'm going to enclose some sales interview questions for you that I believe can really help you in your job to discover the genuine profile (experience) of a candidate. Here we go:

- What are some specific examples of previous sales experiences? What would you do the same? What would you do differently?
- What's your process for making a sale in your current or most recent sales position, from getting the lead all the way through to closing the deal?
- What are your sales goals, and how do your actual results compare to those goals?
- How would you describe yourself as a "Business Analyst in the Banking Domain"?
- How would you differentiate SALES in the IT and Banking domains? How would you analyze and manage it?
- What do you see as this company's strengths, and what changes do you think would improve sales and productivity? How do you feel you could contribute to this improvement?
- You are from a banking organization (worked with BANK), but now you are here with an IT company. What differences would you see and create in regard to SALES?
- What new markets could we address, and how would you suggest we develop these markets?
- What is your understanding of this company's sales cycle, and how does it compare to what you've done in the past?

Don't forget to include a few of the classic interview questions:

- How do you feel your experience would fit this job's needs?
- What's an example of a great success from a past job, and how did you accomplish it?
- What's a significant mistake that you made, how did you correct it, and what did you learn from it?
- What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses, and what do you do to alleviate your weaknesses?
- How do you see your career developing in the next few years, and how will you accomplish that in this company?
- What do you see as the greatest contributions you can make to improve the company's success?

Please do reply if you found these all effective.