April-June sees 13 pc rise in background screening cases: Report

New Delhi (PTI): Background screening is seen as a risk mitigating tool and its importance is growing at a faster pace in India, a report said on Friday. According to background screening firm First Advantage, such verifications help in weeding out negative resources. The company said that in April-June 2019, it received 13 per cent more cases of background screening as compared to the year-ago period. Case level discrepancies in telecom, pharma, FMCG, healthcare, BPO, banking, manufacturing and financial services sectors were much higher than the industry average of 9.5 per cent.

"With the changing economic scenario and opening up of multiple sectors, sourcing and onboarding the 'right' candidate will be the key for any organisation growing through 2020," Vivek Khanna, Managing Director, India Region First Advantage said. As per the report, a huge chunk of discrepancies has occurred in the employment component, followed by address component and education component.

The report 'Q2 2019 Trends Report by FADV' further said the highest number of discrepancies has been observed in the Associate level employees. Associate level discrepancy continues to top the graph at 69 per cent, which means out of every 100 discrepancy cases - 69 are from the Associate level, it said.

In the employment discrepancy checks, males form the biggest chunk at 79 per cent, while for females it is 21 per cent. During April-June 2019, in terms of state-wise discrepancies Karnataka topped the chart at 24 per cent, Maharashtra (21 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (12 per cent), Tamil Nadu (9 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (6 per cent) and New Delhi (5 per cent). The survey was done on the basis of discrepancies that First Advantage had found from various business enterprises across all industries.