You are in : Human Resources

Screening & Verification

Background checks made easy with MIE

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:01

Managed Integrity Evaluation (Pty) Ltd. (MIE), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ideco Group and established credentials verification services provider, owns and operates South Africa’s first commercial aggregated qualifications register.

The National Qualifications Register (NQR®) was first introduced in 2000 as an accurate, streamlined way to address the growing demand for credentials verification and background screening from both public and private organisations.

“Processing the increase in number of requests was both time and labour intensive. We wanted to expedite verification and do so internally, without the need to call on external services,” explains Ina van der Merwe, CEO, MIE.

The NQR® now serves as a database housing graduate records from all subscribed tertiary institutions. This register is implemented as a computerised relational database, and is accessed via a suite of specialised and integrated tools.

Information comes straight from the institution and means that MIE has all the necessary information at hand to verify qualifications quickly. The institutions are the owners of their own information, and MIE a custodian.

To date the NQR® has upwards of 2,6 million student qualification entries.

MIE performs the qualification verifications on behalf of subscribing institutions, and levies a prescribed fee for their benefit.

It is updated regularly to reflect the most recent graduation status for each institution, and enables almost instantaneous verification feedback for resident qualifications.

According to van der Merwe qualifications that are officially from institutions not listed on the Register can take some time to verify. This can have serious implications for individuals and the job market as a whole.

“Being able to verify a qualification quickly means that persons with legitimate qualifications have an advantage in the job market. If there is a lengthy wait for confirmation it could mean that either the person gets passed over because the qualification cannot be verified quickly enough or it means that the employer just hires the person anyway, and its quite possible that the qualification is fraudulent,” she adds.

For more information about the NQR® click through to MIE