Know how to screen out Sexual Harassers in the Hiring Process

Overview

Business organizations with negligent or outdated hiring processes are likely exposed to the risk of disrupting their company’s reputation with issues like sexual harassment incidents. Even one incident has the potential to make irreversible damages to both the company and the victim. Hence, recruiters must do everything possible to screen out the candidates in the hiring process itself with the notion to ensure a safe workplace. Unfortunately, most of the companies lack a specific approach to identify toxic minded candidates with the usual screening procedures. Here, I’m introducing the approaches that best proved to be effective in assessing the candidates’ toxic mentality.

Following are the best approaches to screen out sexual harassers during a hiring process,

Employee Referrals: This procedure should be incorporated in all the organization’s recruitment processes to avoid hiring toxic candidates. This method is proven to be the greatest contributor in the decision-making process as the candidates’ ex-employer or manager gives attestation to their performance and character. Also, the companies can hold candidates liable for the quality of referral to avoid junk or fabricated reviews.

Criminal Background Checks:

This should be the must-have procedure in all the organizations to hire any resources. Be it a person who is in an organizations’ key role or the security and house-keeping manpower, Criminal background check should be a mandatory procedure in the recruitment process.

Drug Abuse Check:

Prospective employees should be verified for drugs or alcohol abuse prior to being hired. This measure ensures both the safety and reputation of the company as well as the other employees in the work station. Employers should consider Drug abuse tests to be part of the hiring process to avoid any unforeseen incidents from employees. Hiring process gets even more scrutinized and systematic when every candidate passes pre-employment drug and alcohol abuse verification.

Continue the assessment even after hiring:

Every candidate will be on their best behavior at the time of the interview but the true colors come to the light only after days pass by. Most of the organizations give the least priority to the check on candidates’ behavior with the co-workers after the hiring process. And most of the issues come to everyone’s knowledge only after such incidents take place. But, every organization’s objective should be to weed out toxic employees while detecting unusual behavior itself. This is only possible when business forms realize the importance of continued character assessments.

It is important to ensure that the test we run is done with the best approach to fulfill the objective of hiring only the best fits. Though the internal Human Resources team can run several tests, it is always recommended to opt for Third-party background verifiers who are particularly specializing in the fields of criminal and psychological screening methodologies. As always said, Prevention is better than cure!

You can also refer here to know about The Mistakes in Background Screening that Can Affect a Business