Employers and recruiters often need to verify a job applicant’s education history. Usually, these background checks are pretty straightforward. With education is is the name of the school, the location of the school, type of degree, major and year of graduation.
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.
With international students, there is a similar condition as with female graduations. Often a foreign student went to school under a formal, native name. And then, over time, to “Americanize,” if you will the Bao Wynn Nguyen is now Ben or Frank. Good for him or her. But when we are unable to verify, it is something necessary to go back to the candidate and ask if what name he or she used to register as a student.
Employers and recruiters often need to verify a job applicant’s education history. Usually, these background checks are pretty straightforward. With education is is the name of the school, the location of the school, type of degree, major and year of graduation.
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.
Be aware of diploma mills. This is where the employment candidate has spend all of a couple hundred bucks and twenty minutes, sometimes, in qualifying as a graduate from some mythical Internet School under the guise of “life experience.” Diploma mills often have them high falutin’ names that can sound like real schools. They are not. They are not legitimate remote or distance learning institutions. They are bugus, unacdredited by anyone other than themselves, and the degree is worthless.
With international students, there is a similar condition as with female graduations. Often a foreign student went to school under a formal, native name. And then, over time, to “Americanize,” if you will the Bao Wynn Nguyen is now Ben or Frank. Good for him or her. But when we are unable to verify, it is something necessary to go back to the candidate and ask if what name he or she used to register as a student.
Sometimes, when all else fails, it is incumbent upon the employment candidate to supply a copy or his or her degree or transcripts. We request this when the registrar is unable to locate the student in its database. Sometimes it’s a technical glitch, sometimes it’s an oversight on the part of the registrar. And sometimes the employment candidate never attended that college or university. As for their explanations and excuses, we have heard quite a few. Some or mundane and predictable, akin to the dog ate my homework. But some are pretty creative. One day I will list a few. One chestnut was the lament, “The school just can’t get it’s s**t together.”
Too rare.
