What All HR Managers Should Know About Resume Screening

Almost 40% of the Indian workforce comprises of blue-collar workers. This forms the backbone for several sectors, like logistics, ecommerce, security forces, construction and manufacturing. The blue-collar segment is also critical for achieving India’s vision of a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25.

Despite this, as many as 3% of blue-collar workers have a criminal record. A few of their common crimes are burglary, shoplifting and assault. No wonder then that almost all Indian companies want to run a thorough background check before onboarding them. You, as a responsible HR professional, must consider thorough resume screening and pre-employment assessment. Here is a guide that will help you with this process.

Worker Verification

In-depth screening can be a lengthy and tedious process. It often takes up to 10 days, costing HR professionals like you to lose many working hours. However, skipping this procedure can have severe consequences. Blue-collar workers contribute to your revenue growth and are often the face of your brand, especially in the logistics segment. So, fraud, unsafe behaviours and false identities of your workers can seriously damage your business. Uncovering such behaviours and firing them can cost your business a lot of money, as will going through the hiring, onboarding, and trading process once again.


Manual verification is often unable to eliminate suspicious profiles. It could also be error prone. The best option is to consider a more robust process that conducts various checks. Choose the one that covers 22K pin codes and 9K courts and offers 15 types of verifications like:

• Medical check
• Reference check
• Postal record check

You must also choose a solution that has advanced reporting features for timely alerts and notifications. Details like employment and education should also be considered. Drug tests and covid tests from preferred diagnostic centres need to be conducted for the safety of your entire workforce. Accurate insights and transparency can help companies make safe hiring decisions.

Resume Screening

Blue-collar positions involve manual labour, rather than office work. So, you might feel there is little or no value in assessing the applicants. But testing candidate suitability is necessary to protect your people and market reputation. Big Indian brands like Swiggy, Flipkart, HSBC, Café Coffee Day and TCS are already using powerful tech platforms to manage the largely fragmented blue-collar force. This is one of the top factors that is helping them achieve operational excellence.

Quality resume selection includes educational and employment verifications with different methods like phones, database integration and emails. Background verification software can further automate various aspects of the screening process and reduce double entries and manual steps. You can transform your frontline workforce by using a people-centric and technology-driven approach that is fast, easy, and accurate.

A part of the CV screening should include records from a candidate’s previous company. A testimonial of their work experience will give you a clear picture of their behaviour. This brings to notice those that you would specifically like to avoid. For example, heavy smokers or the ones who are less active.

Candidates applying for blue-collar jobs might submit resumes that are less sophisticated and non-elaborate. It makes decisions quite difficult when hiring in big volumes. But a check is mandatory since you, as an employer, are at more risk than the employee. This is when an Employment Verification Letter (EVL) comes in handy. It can ensure that an individual is credible and reliable and a potential fit for a company. The document serves as proof of their experience, conduct at work and general performance.

Your resume screening checklist must include previous job titles and duties, salaries and bonuses, address of the previous company and basic contact details. A complete end-to-end HRMS software can cover all HR functions. The best one can seamlessly integrate with your existing systems with plug-and-play APIs.