Verification of Employment for staffing company in the UK

Challenges.

The following challenges were highlighted as “need to be addressed” by the Project Management team:

• Significantly high volume of work- multiple steps, data entry for 35+ fields and 5,000 profiles – all of which needed to be completed within 35 days.
• Many a time, the handwritten assessment forms were illegible and needed to be sent back to the client for clarification or for requesting fresh images. This delayed the overall process.
• Skill assessment forms and candidate ID documents were received in separate lots and needed to be mapped accurately.
• A few hundred handwritten skill assessment forms were in Portuguese and required us to deploy Portuguese specialists to address such cases.
• No responses to our feedback-request emails from former employers or their non-availability during the initial Skype or phone calls required continued follow-ups and delayed project schedule.

Solution.

Devised and delivered a seamless two-step candidate verification workflow. The first step involved manual data extraction and entry of 35 data fields from 5,000+ scanned images of handwritten skill assessment forms and Id proof documents. In the second step, feedback forms were emailed to ex-employers, follow up over SKYPE calls, and entering their feedback in client approved excel format.

Approach

Hiring and Training

A 10-member team of data verification professionals and tele calling executives was assigned to the project. The team members were trained in:

• Engineering jargon as well as terminologies used on Oil and Gas rigs and platforms.
• Basic Portuguese language
• Identification and information extraction from specific fields assessment and ID proof documents.

Qualification Matching

• Each candidate’s profile was meticulously evaluated against the client-provided qualification matrix.
• Updated the excel sheet, marking candidates as “Qualify” or “Not-Qualify.”
• For those who qualified, we initiated a feedback verification process. Non-qualifying candidates did not undergo this step.

Employment Verification

• For qualified candidates, we conducted verification using Google search for data authenticity and eliminate duplicates. All significant findings and observations were systematically recorded in the Excel sheet.
• We sent feedback forms via email to previous employers of qualified candidates, asking them to authenticate the employment history.
• For ex-employers who did not respond to emails, we followed-up through Skype calls. These calls were recorded and included in the feedback database.
• We leveraged custom in-house Excel macros to efficiently manage reminders and notifications to do thorough follow-ups with employers to send back duly filled feedback forms.
• Upon receiving these forms, we accurately entered the feedback into the client-approved Excel format.

Deliverables

• The final candidate verification database in excel format was sent across to the client.

Update mechanism:

• Daily reports in the form of dashboards and spreadsheets were shared for quality, turnaround, and productivity metrics.
• Project monitoring report including KPI achievements against goals was shared after project completion in 35 days.

Quality Check and Audit

• We used the double key-in method to eliminate errors and 100% accurate data entered in the excel sheet.
• Scanned document images for records entered erroneously were routed back to respective data entry professionals for corrections.

Business Impact.