Peter Cleverton: The Middle East has huge growth potential for HireRight

MEBusiness

Peter Cleverton is responsible for managing all aspects of the day-to-day running of the business in EMEA, as well as overseeing the Sales and Marketing teams, operations and service delivery. With over 19 years of experience in selling to the recruitment industry, Peter has managed and worked alongside some of the world’s largest organisations, aligning their strategies on recruitment and technology. Peter is also responsible for supporting Steve Girdler, HireRight’s Managing Director of EMEA and APAC, in driving growth and development in key markets across the EMEA region, as HireRight continues to expand and accelerate its global growth.

What does HireRight offer?

We work with organisations worldwide to help them verify candidate information during the recruitment process. We also help businesses rescreen their employees post-hire – they may do this periodically, following a promotion, after a merger or acquisition, or due to regulatory requirements, such as the FCA’s Senior Manager’s & Certification Regime.

We cover more than 200 countries and territories, working across all sectors, with a focus on Technology, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Staffing in the Middle East.

We also integrate with over 30 applicants tracking systems (ATS), making it easy for our platform to work efficiently alongside our customers’ existing HR systems.

What differentiates you from competitors?

Our vision is to become the world’s most respected, most accurate and most accessible background screening and workforce solutions partner.

We are establishing new standards within the industry by improving the candidate experience, striving to provide companies with unparalleled accuracy and transparency around the screening process. We have recently invested significantly in developing our people, technology and infrastructure, all to provide the best resources to our customers.

Isn’t this just a ‘nice to have’ service in a company’s recruitment process?

Whether a company is opening a new office due to rapid growth or replenishing their core workforce, getting the hiring process right is essential.

A good employee may stay with a company for years, progressing through the ranks and adding great value to a business, but a bad hire can be a drain on resources, time and energy. Poor hires can cause reputational damage, incur additional recruitment costs and even contribute to low staff morale, all of which can have a lasting effect on the bottom line.

Background screening is a tried and tested method of mitigating employment risk and verifying that your candidates have the experience and qualifications that they claim – so we see it as far more than a ‘nice to have’.

In terms of growth in the region, where are you seeing the most business coming from? Which countries, industries?

The Middle East has huge growth potential for HireRight and we’ve had a team based in Dubai since 2016, serving our expanding multinational customer base in the Middle East and North Africa.

We are seeing growth in the finance, technology and healthcare sectors, reflecting global trends. In highly regulated industries such as Financial Services and Healthcare, companies increasingly turn to us to help verify candidate background information, such as their qualifications, employment history and credentials.

What is the most common info that companies ask you to verify about a candidate in the region? Is this similar to the rest of the world?

The background screening market in the Middle East is still developing, but as screening awareness is increasing, companies are utilising a wider range of pre-employment checks. The most common background checks performed in the region are employment, education, and credential verifications. Data from our 2019 global employment screening benchmark survey shows that this generally aligns with the most requested checks around the world, which are criminal, credit, identity, employment and education verifications.

What trends are you seeing in the industry?

We have seen from our own data that across EMEA more criminal record checks are being run year on year. This is supported by the findings of our 2019 EMEA Employment Screening Benchmark Survey, which found that 78% of companies asked said they conduct criminal checks. This was a rise of approximately 13% on last year’s Benchmark figure, and placed criminal checks second only to employment and reference checks (82%).

This could be an indication that companies are taking more of a belt and braces approach to screening, realising the risks that hiring a diverse multinational workforce can bring.

By running global criminal checks (where appropriate and legally permissible), businesses are able to continue to recruit the best talent from around the world and not worry if their new hire has something in their past that they’re not aware of.