Best Practices for Hiring in the Digital Age

Introduction

Ever since the pandemic, the call to work for home has grown louder for many businesses across the world, including information technology jobs. With that in mind, it has become increasingly important to be thorough with hiring practices. There are even some security concerns in the hiring process, so it’s a good idea to be thorough and invested in each potential employee. With technology and the increasing demand for remote work, bad actors have been able to infiltrate even the strongest hiring practices.

With recent problems happening in the cybersecurity world, it’s important to make sure everyone is who they say they are. One of the biggest ways to prevent being socially engineered through phishing, vishing, and even onsite is to make sure people are verified. If something seems weird, there’s probably a reason for that. Hiring people should follow the same consideration through comprehensive background checks and interviews.

Best Hiring Practices

Bad actors have been getting craftier when it comes to social engineering. There are many ways that they can spin a tale to get hired at both large and small companies. While a regular background check might work in most cases, interviews, both in-person and video, are also crucial to verification.

Background Checks

Background checks can only go as far as checking an identity and past instances that may have occurred. If there has been a stolen identity, the background check may not be able to pick that up. Someone who has had their identity stolen may not even know that it was taken. This can lead to a background check simply going through as normal, especially if the person hasn’t done anything wrong.

Because of this, background checks are simply the first step in the hiring process. If the bad actor is experienced enough, this will be no problem to pass with a stolen identity. There have also been advances in AI that could possibly enhance a bad actor’s methods to infiltrate a business.

Interviews

Interviews have always been a crucial block for the hiring process. Meeting a potential employee will tell you many things about them and you will likely know if the person is a good fit for the company. While face-to-face interviews are usually best, it is understandable that this can’t always be done. As such, some businesses may simply rely on phone interviews. These days, phone interviews make it much harder to verify the potential employee.

Artificial intelligence has made voice calls difficult to judge. AI has advanced so much that even video calls can come into question. Bad actors will do anything to get through those barriers, so video interviews are always a better idea. However, even these types of interviews can be altered by AI. It’s always good to have multiple interviews and to have in-person interviews whenever possible.

References

For many people, references are included on resumes. These references can be an important factor for many potential employees, but it is even more important to verify them. This is especially true for remote work, considering that you will have less tools to verify a person’s identity. Checking references can make all the difference in determining a good applicant from a bad one.

There are plenty of tools to verify references, including Google and other various search engines. A quick look might tell you if something is fishy or not. There might be a company that doesn’t exist or a person that doesn’t exist at a company.

Limited Access

At this point, a bad actor may have gotten through the hiring process. In a cybersecurity sense, it is important to limit new people on the network. With these defenses in place, even if the hacker has somehow gotten past these hiring practices, they will not be able to do very much damage to the business’s network. With proper restrictions, your information will be protected.

Conclusion

With bad actors becoming more advanced, it is important to maintain best practices and not become complacent when it comes to security. Verification is an important matter, especially when it comes to remote work for a business. If a bad actor is hired to a company, they can cause tremendous amounts of damage.

Even if they get through, however, proper cybersecurity measures can keep these hackers and various other bad actors from doing harm to a network. They may be cornered or sectioned off from deeper parts of the network, making sure that they can’t have access without spending time with the company or its employees. These safeguards are crucial when it comes to protecting your business, so never skip the best practices.