Sarah Baldeo of ISB Canada finds it interesting the number of human resource leaders who do not see any value in performing criminal background checks. Some, she said, regard them as being superfluous and believe that reference checks are sufficient when verifying information. Some have even made the argument that they can verify references through LinkedIn or Google to ensure these contracts are indeed whom they say they are. According to Baldeo, however, these social media sites can only verify that the person works for said company and the length of time they have been there. Depending solely on reference checks assumes that every piece of information the applicant provides is entirely honest and accurate – putting the onus for mitigating risk on an external candidate.
