While employers have long conducted education verification checks on their employment candidates, it appears that increasingly more staffing and recruiting groups are being made responsible for conducting this and other background checks as part of the employment screening process.

Education history, of course, outside of criminal records, is one of the more significant searches.   For many positions,  education is not just a prerequisite but also vital to employment candidate's incumbent skill sets and the legitimacy they bring to the job. Those employment recruits who claim to but who do not possess the required skills can cause untold embarrassment to employer or recruiter alike.  Both can lose clients over it, and in the extreme cases incur law suits.  

Most notable, if a candidate lies, chances are he is lying about his education.  With employment history, a fair number of applicants will exaggerate their role  at a job or otherwise stretch the truth.   But seldom do they out and out lie about working for an employer.   This is not so much the case with education histories.  Here is where the employment candidate will attempt to magically transform his two years of college into a full blown Bachelor's Degree.  Or in some cases, they never set foot inside the school.

I have often wondered why the candidate decides to select the school he has never been to.  Did he like the football team?  The debating club?  The school colors?   Or was it a large university with high levels of enrollment and he thought any degree verification efforts would somehow get lost in the shuffle?  But then sometimes they speak a smaller school, an ivy shrouded liberal arts college in New England or somewhere, where they might think no one would bother searching.   It's hard to say what goes on in their minds, but I have considered the implications of the schools they select. 

To be sure, most employment candidates do not lie about having their college degrees. the overwhelming majority  in fact are reputable and honest when it comes to claiming their certifications and degrees.   Verifying education with most recruits is a fairly simple and straightforward process.  Once we get from the client the type of degree the candidate has obtained,  the name of the school, the location of the school, type of degree, major and year of graduation, the rest is pretty simple.  Either we obtain verification from the school registrar's office, the name and position of the verifying party, or we get it from the third party databases.  All fine and valid.

There are exceptions.  But for the most part, again, these are honest mistakes or simple oversights that are easily rectified.   With common names, sometimes the degree is not enough.   The researcher may require the major and the actual campus of the college or university.  The campus is always important as most colleges and universities, despite the myriad branches, do not centralize their databases.  The records for graduates and post-graduate degrees are housed with the registrar of that particular campus.

The wrong graduation date can cause confusion when conducting an education verification background search.   With the wrong graduation date, it is sometimes difficult to find the student in the database.  In some cases, and good to remember, those applicants who are lying about actually graduating from that college or university, will provide a fictitious graduation date.   By doing so they try to hide the fact that they were "enrollment only" or never attended at all.   So often we need to verify the graduation date.

Female graduates often go to school under their maiden names and then, years later, forget and provide only their married name.  Time can be wasted searching for your candidate under her married name, when she attended school under her maiden name.   When you as a recruiter or human resources executive are trying to get someone hired, this can cause delays.   So it is always best to find out up front if her current name is the same name she used while attending the college or university.

With international students attending domestic colleges, there is a similar condition as with female college graduates. Often a foreign student went to school under a formal, native name.   And then, over time, they"Americanize,"  their names.  Bao Wynn Nguyen is now Ben or Frank.   His recent colleagues, the recruiter and most others now know him as Ben or Frank.   But the school still has him records with his native name.  When we are unable to verify, initially,  it is necessary to go back to the candidate and ask if what name he or she used to register as a student.  Again, this can cause delays in the hiring process.