For HR professionals, compliance is non-negotiable. Whether you’re verifying credentials, employment history, or skills, accurate information ensures your hiring decisions are sound, fair, and legal.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through proven steps, tools, and strategies to verify LinkedIn candidate information while maintaining compliance standards.
That’s why verification processes can save you from a compliance nightmare.
The first way to verify a candidate’s LinkedIn claims is through employment history.
Pro tip: Use tools like Wiza to quickly extract verified email addresses and phone numbers from LinkedIn profiles.
Read our guide: How to find someone’s phone number (for real)
Candidates often embellish their degrees or list institutions they never attended. In fact, a HireRight report found that 23% of candidates misrepresented their education.
Tips and resources to bookmark:
LinkedIn endorsements and recommendations can be insightful, but they also require scrutiny.
Example to copy and paste:
Hi [Recommender’s Name],
I hope you’re well. I’m reviewing [Candidate’s Name] for a role at [Your Company] and saw your LinkedIn recommendation. I’d love a bit more insight into:
I would appreciate your input. I’m happy to connect via email or a quick call, whichever works best for you.
Thank you for your time!
Best regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Job Title]
[Your Company]
Many candidates showcase specific skills and certifications on LinkedIn. Verifying these is especially critical for technical and regulated industries.
One challenge HR professionals face is reaching out to candidates with incomplete or outdated LinkedIn profiles.
While LinkedIn is a great starting point, always follow up with thorough background checks.
While verifying hard skills and employment history is straightforward with LinkedIn profiles and external tools, soft skills like communication, adaptability, and leadership can be trickier to assess. However, soft skills often make or break a candidate’s success in the workplace.
Prepare situational questions that encourage candidates to provide examples of how they’ve demonstrated soft skills in previous roles.
Example to copy and paste:
Tell me about when you had to adapt to a significant change at work. How did you approach it?
When reaching out to past employers or peers, ask targeted questions that focus on soft skills.
Example to copy and paste:
Can you give an example of how [Candidate’s Name] handled pressure or resolved conflicts in a team?
Pay attention to how candidates respond during the hiring process – whether via email, LinkedIn messages, or calls. Politeness, clarity, and timeliness can offer real-time insights into soft skills like communication and professionalism.
By layering these approaches into your verification process, you can gain a more holistic understanding of your candidate, reducing the risk of hiring someone who doesn’t align with your company culture.
Verifying LinkedIn candidate information isn’t about mistrust but building a hiring process rooted in fairness, compliance, and confidence. By validating employment history, education, skills, and recommendations, HR professionals can make informed decisions that save time and money and mitigate the risks of bad hires.
Tools like Wiza simplify the process by providing verified contact details and streamlining outreach, while background check platforms ensure compliance at every step.
We’d love to hear your thoughts – what strategies or tools do you use to verify candidates? Share your insights or challenges in the comments below!
Beyond LinkedIn, consider using skills assessments tailored to the role (like coding challenges for developers or writing tests for content specialists). Behavioral interviews and work samples are also effective ways to validate specific skills.
If there’s a mismatch, address it directly during the interview. Politely ask for clarification and allow the candidate to explain. In some cases, it may simply be an oversight. However, you can always cross-check details with references or background checks for peace of mind.
Tools like Wiza are designed to comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA when extracting publicly available contact details. However, ensuring your outreach methods remain compliant is still essential.
Look for specific mentions in recommendations or endorsements, and cross-reference with behavioral interview questions to get real-world examples. You can also observe how candidates communicate throughout the hiring process itself.
Consider platforms like GitHub (for developers), Behance (for designers), or Google Scholar (for researchers). For outreach, tools like Hunter.io or NeverBounce can further validate emails and contact information outside of LinkedIn.
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