JOB applicants who augment degree results on their CVs or fake references have reason to fear Eyal Ben-Cohen.
The 34-year-old entrepreneur runs Verifile, a company that checks the CVs of its clients’ prospective employees. “We make sure a person is who they say they are and that there are no skeletons in the closet,” Eyal says.
About a quarter of job- hunters lie on their CVs, recent figures show. Even high-powered executives are not immune from the temptation to make a resumé a little more eye catching. This year David Edmondson stepped down as head of RadioShack, the American electronics retailer, after he admitted inflating his academic qualifications. Last year Charles Thomson, chief executive of Equitable Life, admitted that he had written a reference himself.
Eyal, who worked as a market development director at an internet provider in Israel before coming to the UK to do an MBA, has not always held a burning desire to track down CV cheats. He says that the idea came to him three days before he boarded the plane to start his course at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire. “I was able to develop the idea during my MBA year and received a lot of support from the university,” he says.
He gained his first client as soon as he set up the business in 2004, by signing up the accountancy firm that was helping him to establish the business. He worked tirelessly by himself to track down the information that was needed.
“Our basic checks include verifying that applicants have the qualifications that they purport to have and that they have taken part in all the work experience listed on a CV,” he says. This can be time-consuming because he will not settle for certificates. “They can be faked,” he says. “We go back to the source.”
Verifile can also check financial and criminal records. All applicants must give permission for such checks, but last month it emerged that thousands of job-hunters were being subjected to overrigorous background checks by employers. While those working with children or in positions of financial responsibility have to undergo in-depth checks, applicants for unrelated jobs were also being checked to the same extent, which is illegal.
Eyal says: “Our role here is to help the employers we work with to comply with the law. We know which checks are appropriate for which jobs.”
Eyal now employs five full-time staff and five freelancers to deal with a client base of about a hundred companies that includes some top FTSE-listed firms. He hopes to have ten full-time staff next year, when he expects the firm to turn over about £1 million.
“Companies are more and more open to our ability to reduce hassle for them,” he says. “Too often, firms hire an employee, send a letter off to verify his or her references, and then it all gets put on the back burner. If there is then a crisis with this employee, it is hard to do anything if the references were never checked.”
- Verifile: 01234 766772, www.verifile.co.uk
Expert analysis: Doug Richard
“Eyal has entered a marketplace that is ready for an innovative approach. He has identified that there is a fast-growing demand by employers not only to check out prospective employees but to do so in a way that correctly navigates the current complex regulatory landscape.
“He has taken the hardest step: he has entered the market with a web-fronted approach and secured key initial clients.
“But he is not alone. There are well-established organisations that provide pre-employment screening and CV checking, so he must offer a differentiated product if he wants to command the lion’s share of the market.
“At first glance he is different. A client can establish an account online, pricing is on the website and his pricing is attractive. Most of his competitors do not offer the same ease of purchase.
“The challenge is in the ability to scale. The more he grows, the more people he needs to employ. The degree to which he can make his desk researchers more productive than his competitors will define the extent to which he has a sustainable competitive advantage. He is off to a good start in a crowded, inefficient market due for a shake-up.”
- Doug Richard, who has appeared in the past two series of Dragons’ Den on BBC Two, is the founder and chairman of Library House, a consultancy that discovers and monitors innovative new companies.
