White Paper - Application Fraud
Social Security numbers. These policy decisions were made based on best business practices suggestions from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other criminal justice agencies with expertise in criminal history record information systems. Without the ability to match criminal records against social security numbers, pre-employment screening firms are forced to rely on two personal identifiers to search, locate, and confirm whether a job applicant has a criminal past. The two primary personal identifiers that criminal record research specialists rely on to search, locate, and confirm criminal records belonging to a job applicant are name and date of birth. Understanding the importance of obtaining the correct date of birth is paramount to properly and accurately identifying criminal records. With the two aforementioned pieces of information disclosed, importance of collecting correct socials security number an date of birth, we can now address the primary question posed by this piece. What if, for example, a job applicant understands how criminal records are searched ahead of applying for a job with an employer? There is no common or credible means of determining whether a job applicant is providing a correct date of birth on a job application. One may think that a driver"s license would be a good source to determine an applicant"s date of birth. The driver"s license, however, obtains the date of birth information directly from an applicant. When obtaining a driver"s license an applicant needs only to provide proof of their social security number, nothing else. The only perfected method of verifying a job applicant"s date of birth, from this author"s opinion, is to obtain a certified copy of a birth certificate. Obtaining a certified copy of a job applicant"s birth certificate, however, is unreasonable, costly, and potentially discriminatory. Some employers are reluctant to obtain additional documentation relative to the confirmation of a job applicant"s date of birth, and rightfully so. For example, an employer may obtain a job applicant"s driver"s license or government ID before running a background check. Most employers do not want to obtain this information at a pre-hire stage though, because the documents may reveal information that is considered discriminatory against age, sex, or national origin. Therefore, the trend is for employers to obtain documentation at a post-hire stage and after the background check has been performed. Now consider this, if we know that a majority of job applicants falsify their resumes, then how many applicants falsify their personal identifiable information to potentially alter the outcome of a pre-employment criminal background check too? If there is no positive benefit for a job applicant, without prior criminal history, to falsify their name or date of birth, then logically there is a much higher benefit for a job applicant, with criminal history, to falsify their name and date of birth on a job application. Moreover, if job applicants, without criminal histories, who perceive a benefit in falsifying their resume, occur more often than not, then any correlation to this human behavior would surely apply to a job applicant"s motivation in falsifying their name and date of birth to cover up their criminal history too. Unfortunately, there are no reliable statistics to show the number of job applicants that falsify their name and date of birth in effort to manipulate the outcome of a pre-employment criminal background check. Nevertheless, this author has observed numerous instances where it appears job applicants provide erroneous name and date of birth information on job applications. Applicants supplying date of birth information on a job application or background release form may not be providing incorrect information intentionally. Job applicants that are accustom to Hispanic, European, and Military date formats will instinctively enter date of birth information as MM/DD/YR, not DD/MM/YR. While this seems trivial, an applicant could easily enter the date of birth information in a different format than what is normally processed by the pre-employment screening firm. Thus, throwing-off a criminal record background check and showing the applicant as having a clean criminal history. In an effort to combat the abovementioned intentional and unintentional behavior from happening, preventive measures should potentially be considered when performing background checks. As with any new course of action in performing background checks the relevant risks and rewards need to be considered. One such preventive measure is to consider using screening services that can reasonably provide additional personal identifiable information on the applicant. Many pre-employment screening firms and employers, however, tend to veer away from this particular practice. The pre-employment screening firms and employers are veering from this practice because it is becoming more and more important to protect job applicant"s personal identifiers (socials security number, name, date of birth, address), which are revealed on a job application and final background check report. Employers in particular have noticed a trend in job applicants disfavoring filling out job application forms that require the dissemination of personal identifiable information. With identity fraud and computer hackers on the rise, employers and responsible business entities alike that are requesting the personal identifiable information cannot blame a job applicant for their concerns. Hence, the risk of requesting personal identifiable information from job applicants must be weighed accordingly with the potential reward an employer receives in obtaining a more accurate pre-employment criminal background check. For the employer willing to take on the additional risk and reward of collecting and utilizing more invasive measures to reasonably obtain verification of name and date of birth, there are processes that can be integrated into the pre-employment background check services. One such processes is to expand the personal identifiable information that is returned on proprietary background check services to retrieve additional verification of the name and date of birth provided by the job applicant. Another means is to perform additional types of background check services. Additional background check services such as credit reports may return confirmation of name and date of birth information. For companies not wanting to divest a job applicant"s credit history report, however, the first option mentioned here within, expanding the personal identifiers within a specific background check processes, may be a better option. One such service that may have been overlooked by many employers as standard practice, but not used to its full potential is the social security verification service. Most employers are familiar with the social security verification service returning results relative to a job applicant"s name variations (aka Aliases) and address history reports. Recently, changes in the social security verification service have enabled pre-employment screening companies to provide expanded results to this service, which include date of birth information that is associated with the social security number. While the addition of this information may appear trivial, the use of it may be vital to diminishing the risk associated with job applicants providing false date of birth information. Employers seeking to utilize the additional date of birth information within the social security verification service should review the process with their pre-employment screening firm. Employers should determine if the pre-employment screening firm has access to this additional information. Moreover, the employer should determine if the pre-employment screening firm is utilizing this information prior to running a criminal investigation on a job applicant. Just because the information is obtained does not necessarily mean that the information is being used to its maximum effectiveness. By incorporating the usage of the date of birth information in the social security verification service employers may find job applicants are falsifying more than simply their work history and resume. Additionally, employers may find that the percentage of job applicants containing criminal histories is higher than what the employer once perceived. Regardless of the outcome, employers need to be aware that new trends in falsifying of job applications may be abound and are potentially beginning to trend higher.