Rise in job applicants with criminal records

© Ekaterina Minaeva – 123RF.com

Kirsten Halcrow, the managing director of EMPS, one of the oldest background screening companies in South Africa, said what was even more disturbing was the fact that 38% of the candidates who tested positive for a criminal record were repeat offenders, with some job applicants having up to 20 convictions.

"We have reached the point where there is no place to hide for criminals and qualifications fraudsters to enter the job market because screening procedure have become so sophisticated over the past years that is has become almost impossible to beat the system."

Recent statistics show that 65% of the job applicants who tested positive for criminal records committed offences in the past 10 years.

Halcrow said 7.6% of tertiary qualifications submitted to her company for verification in the first half of 2015 were unverifiable. In some instances the qualifications could not be verified as the institutions had long since ceased to exist. In other instances the institutions had not kept accurate records which created issues and a majority were outright fakes - many bought from so-called degree mills in various parts of the world.

Forged matric certificates remained constant at around 10% with many actually being from the Department of Educations but with symbols and subjects altered.

"The most common problem we find is that job applicants replace less desirable subjects to ones that are highly valued in the workplace such as maths and science."

They are generally easy to spot because most of the alterations are amateurish, she said.

Checks are necessary

Halcrow said the bottom line was that companies who did not check the veracity of documents tendered by job applicants were setting themselves up for a fall.

"It is common knowledge that unemployment is on the rise and that only applicants with the best grades in the most desirable subjects stand a chance of getting employed.

"Another issue we have to deal with is the growing number of fake South African IDs that are being used to secure jobs - mostly by illegal immigrants."

She said despite efforts by the Department of Home Affairs to curb the sale of South African ID documents by dishonest home affairs staff, the practice had not been "stopped in its tracks" as promised by the ministry.

"These documents are almost impossible to verify because they were issued by home affairs and despite the fact that they are fraudulent they nonetheless appear on the home affairs database.

"We now also have a division that checks the veracity of every item on an applicant's CV because these are easy to fake.

"We call previous employers to check the applicant's employment record and in the case of a dismissal we check what the reasons were for the dismissal."

Halcrow said honest job applicants had nothing to fear from employment screening companies.

"Just the opposite is true. If a candidate applies for a position and he or she has already been screened, this enhances their chances to get the job.

"Criminals on the other hand should know that they will not be able to get their hands on a company's confidential information or defraud them of millions which happens on a regular basis."

She said there were syndicates that specialised in setting up individuals with all the required documents to get a job and then try and infiltrate companies where they think they can get their hands on the company jewels.

"Our job is to prevent that and generally we have a very high rate of success," Halcrow said.

For more information, visit www.emps.co.za