Internet plays a significant role in changing the way human relations are structured. Each day, millions of users log in to Match.com, eHarmony, Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and Myspace. The numbers of users who find their dear ones online have increased 29% compared to 2009. It is identified by Facebook that 20-40% of the friends in your lists may be those you never even meet. And the number of fake profiles activated by criminals has been identified up to 1 for every 82 profiles. Since the magnitude of choice is huge, social networking sites are providing their best to control fake profiles and prevent criminals from operating their services.

Without question, online dating has expanded the social circles of millions, making it possible to find people with common interests with minimal effort. Though most online daters have good intentions, some may not. Online romance may not always be the right choice as the background and identity of the person remains hidden and can be faked. Individuals have formed relationships with others through the internet only to find out later that their partner was lying about being single, hiding a criminal past or sex offender conviction or using the relationship to get money.

Many people mistakenly think scam or fraud cannot happen to them. Investigators caution that romance scammers and criminals operating via the Internet are professional criminals, and anyone can be a victim. And meeting a person one knows over the Internet for the first time is a challenge one has to face because one must verify that the contact is a credible and he/she is who they say they are. An online dating background check can reveal important things like whether someone is married, has a criminal record, a sex offender conviction or declared bankruptcy.

Start a background check now and get special discount for this Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day is the celebration of love but the week leading to the magic date is a time to remember act and to choose. Dating Violence Awareness Week is an annual event originated in Singapore but fast spreading across the globe to spread awareness about dating violence, particularly among teenagers and adults. The aim of the event is to raise awareness of dating violence and to inform youth the repercussions and ways by which, how to seek help.

Dating violence is a global phenomenon; it happens when a partner uses force or pressure to abuse the other partner sexually, physically or psychologically in a dating relationship. Since fear is injected instilled in the mind by the dominant partner it affects the victim and keeps the victim subjective to the violator. The frequency and the severity of the abuse usually increase as the relationship continues.

Cyber stalking, online dating and Internet crimes also influenced the rise of dating violence. Many a times it has been noted that potential victims are sought out from social networking sites or from online dating networks. Their weak points and character is analyzed before the violators prey on the victims. The most alarming fact is that 79% violators have had a past criminal background or had pending court cases against them.

The scenario is not any different in suburbs in India as well, where in many are subjected to physical, emotional, psychological & sexual violence by their prospective partners in the name of sustainability of a relationship. As violence can be inflicted without any resistance the victim will be virtually enslaved by the violator. Teen victims of physical dating violence are more likely than their non-abused peers to smoke, use drugs, engage in unhealthy diet behaviors, engage in risky sexual behaviors and attempt or consider suicide.

Dating Violence Awareness week is significantly important just as Valentine’s Day, because, love cannot be built on tears and agony. Thorough understanding about the background of the partner and knowledge about how to deal with such circumstances legally and logically is the only way to stop date violence in the initial stages.

As always prevention is better than cure, always ensure your date is an individual of trust and integrity than risk your life and heart at their mercy. Be safe, always choose and do verify people, friends or dates.

After completing the college and getting the graduation degree you certainly feel as if a new turning point is waiting for you or you are soon going to embark upon a new illustrious phase in life. If the degree is in professional course and you have given 4 to 6 years then naturally you are pretty sure of the career path or field you need to follow.

There are some important and effective steps which can enhance your chances of getting a good job at one go.

The 10 essential takeaways:

• Decide your field: Always try to narrow down the field you want to go for so that the target is pin pointed and you can very easily understand the requirements of that arena. For example, if you are a law graduate; you have lot of options to choose from. You can choose to work in a business house as a legal advisor or join a reputed legal firm as an assistant and so on. So, just clip the vast potential offerings of that field and target the only one which interests you and of which you are confident about.
• Research on companies: Top most companies have their own work ethics and requirements. If you are interested in joining a particular company, then you should dig out the whole information about their requirements about that particular post. Initially, to start with at least 3 to 4 such company research should be done. This way you can get a clear cut idea on the various criteria of employment.
• Prepare a good resume: Resume is your first representation. It should be compact, informative and interesting but never elaborate and self appreciating. So as to make sure that your resume is in the right format you can check it on the various websites or get it written by some expert resume writer.
• Make a good covering letter: A good covering letter expresses your intense desire to work and excel and helps in creating an impressive impact.
• Concise portfolio: Portfolio is a showcase of your work ability and hence should exhibit all your achievements and latent talent. Make a good portfolio containing the work pieces of your internship and assignments.
• Placement network: The next step can be registering yourself at one or two eminent placement agencies and also uploading your profile on job offering sites to attract attention of employers.
• Gear up your look: So as to gain entry into the corporate world you need to gear up your appearance and play the part. Buy a business suit and always put it on for interviews or even brief introductory meetings.
• Discuss and talk: A talk here and there, discussions amongst the fellow students, senior’s neighbors can open the door for a good opportunity. So let everyone know that you are hunting for a specific type of job.
• Always be on the toe: Always be ready to answer the calls and mails from the recruiting agencies and employers. Lapses can lead to loosing a good chance.
• You will get it: Be sure of that. Practically, the start can be discouraging at times but never give up and persistently continue your efforts.

• Verify your twitter account with Crederity Verified Seal
• Certify your Resume with Crederity Verified Seal
• Educate people by sharing this post in your network.
• Give your feedback by writing a comment or contacting us.

Twitter is a highly active and popular media site and everyone loves to increase followers to their account. Different ways are followed to increase this follow. Regular and active tweeting can attract lot of attention which can be effectively used to promote any social cause, market a product or raise response in support of particular issue. Here are some of the important tips which can help.

10 Takeaways to get more followers on twitter

• Increase traffic: Just as you toil to enhance traffic on your website, similarly try to increase as much traffic to your twitter account. Treat the twitter account as you treat your website.
• Good tweets on the first page: Post good tweets on the initial page as people usually get attracted by the initial texts. Even if you are not going to be active for couple of days, delete the other tweets and place the good ones on the front. Make sure the tweets are not too less as people expect much more content.
• Make use of ‘tweet this’ button: Always make sure that you are using ‘tweet this’ button especially below those tweets which you feel can be infecting enough to attract attention.
• Twitter contests: You can also organize a twitter competition to increase your followers on your blog. The responses will depend upon what you will be offering as the prize.
• Link with website: Get your twitter account linked to any famous or happening website.
• Make use of your website: If you have a website of your own use the ‘follow up’ button to direct the traffic to your twitter account. This will certainly increase the traffic on your twitter account.
• Printing on visiting card: A visiting card is circulated throughout your clients and business circles. Along with your website address if the twitter account URL link too is also printed on the visiting card, people interested in your business will definitely visit your account on twitter to explore their knowledge on you.
• Participating in contests: Twitter regularly organizes different competitions. You can participate in these contests and leave a message so that other fellow participants can follow you. Being an active participant in different contests held by twitter is a certain way of increasing followers.
• Using twitter URL in SMS: We regularly send SMS to so many people. One certain way of enhancing your followers is using the twitter account URL at the end of every SMS. This way you can circulate the twitter account details to everyone in your contact and they will naturally check upon you if they too are active on twitter.
• Tweet regularly: Participate in tweeting and re-tweeting activity regularly. Once you re-tweet on one account, the followers of that account may notice you too and can follow you as well. This way you can get interconnected followers in huge numbers and increase your following.

Things you should do if you have a twitter account:

• Verify your twitter account with Crederity Verified Seal
• Certify your business with Crederity Trusted Seal
• Verify your new and existing hires.
• Verify your partners, suppliers, vendors and customers/clients.
• Educate people by sharing this post in your network.
• Give your feedback by writing a comment or contacting us.

Just as writing a business plan is quintessential, equally tedious and complex is its execution. Even the smallest and minuscule of information has to be taken into view while jotting down a business plan. Some guidance in this regards certainly can be benefiting.

• For whom it is to be written: It is important to write the business plan by considering for whom it is to be written. For different clients, the perspective might differ and hence deciding your targeted client is important before writing a business plan. Business plan for investors should be of 20 to 25 pages as you need to go into all the details about your product or services and its potential. While if the business plan is being forwarded to banker a 10 to 15 pages document will do comprising of mostly figures and statistics of your company.
• Outline of Business plan: It is important to outline your business plan before actually starting for gathering information and doing research for it. This will save hassles and only relevant information will be collected.
• Collecting information and making research: Once the goal is set its then time to start collecting information and doing some research. Several key points are important while doing these functions like past experience, internet and published information, paid articles, feedback of customers, experts and fellow business persons etc.
• Making files: So as to make the work simpler and less complex, different files can be created. Like, for customer feedback and expert opinion one file and for information gathered from library or internet another file. This way all the information will be arranged in proper manner without making a mix.
• Do an overview first: Before going for interviews with experts always go prepared. Get full information of the industry and understand its market viability, latest updates and successes as well as failures. This will help you in performing well at the interview session.
• Analysis: After gathering all the data and information, the process of analysis starts. In this various factors like contingency plan, risk assessment, competitive profile etc. is analyzed.
• Financial projections: Once you are done with all the analysis and collections, its time to undertake the job of financial projections. Work in tandem with you accountant and account advisors to get a promising projection.
• Summarize: When the entire business plan is done with, write down a good summary of the entire plan where only strong and utility points should be highlighted. A summary should be positively written with more emphasis on the growth potential of the business and heights it can achieve. Summary can be important as many people go through it first to understand the depth of your business plan.
• Read it and review: Review the business plan 2 or 3 times and edit it wherever necessary. Make it more concise, to the point and realistic.
• Presentation: When its time to present to your prospecting fund raisers, the presentation should be elegant and formal without any elaborate overtures.

Things you should do if you have a small business or a startup:

• Certify your business with Crederity Trusted Seal.
• Promote your business with a Trust Card.
• Verify your new and existing hires.
• Verify your partners, suppliers, vendors and customers/clients.
• Read case studies for assessing Crederity Trusted Program
• Educate people by sharing this post in your network.
• Give your feedback by writing a comment or contacting us.

For any small venture in juvenile stage boosting up sale is a must. And for this meticulous planning along with research is very important. Every business has its special highlighting features and some functional drawbacks. Overcoming the weakness and drawing profit right from the start plays a pivotal role in building up of business. And for startups it is all the more essential.

• Evaluate the plus points: Understand the key points of your product or services and try to highlight them in the promotion campaigns and advertisements.
• Understand the client need: Try to understand the need of the client and where your product can be fitted in the various need category of the customer. If possible, make changes in the product or services so as to match up the needs.
• Employ skilled employees: A good business stands on the persistent efforts of management and its employees. So a competent team of workforce is needed to be developed which can take responsibility. A right blend of experienced and fresh employees can develop a good work culture and spirit which boosts up the production and sale.
• Trying new marketing tricks: Marketing is quintessential for the profit and on it solely depends on how well the marketing strategy is developed. So try adapting a marketing agenda which is applicable to the current trend and mentality of the customer so that good customers can be roped in. Well planned marketing always pay.
• Prepare in advance: If you are approaching a particular client for offering services or for getting a bulk order then it is advisable to get the information about the client and its working in advance. Depending upon the information adapt a strategy as to how the client should be approached and negotiated.
• Discipline is the key: Not only in the startup days but all the time discipline and efficiency can make you hold the client and loose working can make you loose well earned business. So all the time, efficiency and timely service is must!
• Always be ready: Always think about the need and liking of the customer and constantly keep on adding new features to your product. During the start up phase, there is always scope for improvisation in product and strategy and you should be ready for it.
• Back up strategy: A marketing or selling policy which runs on only one decided program cannot succeed long. The strategy should be adaptive enough to make changes according to the arising shift in the situation. Hence a backup strategy is must.
• Alternatives: Always keep scope for offering different options or alternatives in your services as customer needs can differ in smaller units. Offering different options or diversifying products can give the customer various options to choose which will satisfy him as a buyer or as an investor.
• Be enthusiastic: Whatever the outcome of a deal is, always greet the client with enthusiasm and confidence and never let despair show on your face. Make cheerfulness a USP of your selling team which in itself is a great sale booster.

Things you should do if you have a startup:

• Certify your business with Crederity Trusted Seal.
• Promote your business with a Trust Card.
• Verify your new and existing hires.
• Verify your partners, suppliers, vendors and customers/clients.
• Read case studies for assessing Crederity Trusted Program
• Educate people by sharing this post in your network.
• Give your feedback by writing a comment or contacting us.

Capital is a crucial issue while starting up a venture and an entrepreneur or a group of entrepreneurs need to look out for various ways out for raising funds. Precaution is a must at the start as any financier can take undue advantage of your situation.Before starting always gauge the fund necessity of your business and how much initially you can put into it, because the first funding should always come from you. This shows that you believe in your own venture and are confident about its success. Your monetary limits decide the initial limits of your funding. By following few steps you can easily get good funding from others as well.

Take advantage of 10 takeaways for startups looking for raising funds:

• Evaluate funding need: Firstly, try to find out how much fund is needed for initial start up. This will help you to understand basic funding needs for starting your venture. Try to cover up all the segments of business in this evaluation.
• Funding limits: Depending upon the evaluated fund needed to startup a business tries to find out how much fund you can raise yourself at the start. This will make you deduce the amount which is to be raised from outside.
• Build a plan: Although no one asks for a fully developed plan at the start but investors do need to feel interested in your venture and for this you should put down the potential and growing possibilities of your business. Put a general summary of your business on paper or if possible get it written from an expert. Basic factors like market needs, sales strategy, business description and projection of finances should be included.
• Entertaining with service providers: Develop good contacts with service providers like legal firms, bankers or auditors. Go out with them and let them entertain you. They will focus attention on you in the hope that once sufficient finances are raised for your venture you will hire their services. These people have good connections and will give you good references or introduce you to interested investors.
• Find out advisory sources: There are many universities which help entrepreneurs in their initial capital raising. Check whether you can apply there and find out the various criteria for making your business eligible for funding from them.
• Join entrepreneur encouraging groups or associations: Many leading institutions and industrialists join together to form a forum to support entrepreneurs and help them in fund raising. You can try for registering here and take the advantage.
• Be a part of technology council: These technological councils charge only a small amount of money for joining but open a flood of opportunities for getting good referrals and potential investors as well as sellers and buyers.
• Announce your plan in public forum: Try to get space for making it to the public forum where entrepreneurs are given opportunity to showcase the salient features of their business. Many successful entrepreneurs and businessmen attend the function and your business plan might gain a good funding from them.
• Establish Trust: Establishing trust is utmost importance, you must tell your potential investors that you are not a fly-by-night company and will stay in business for a long time. Before putting in the money the investor will definitely like to verify the authenticity of the team members and the business.
• Joining a group: Many corporate groups want to diversify and are on the lookout for a professional in the concerned field who can be trusted. You can share some of your business with such groups and get fund in return.

Things you should do if you looking to raise fund:

• Get a Crederity Trusted Seal to establish trust with investors.
• Verify your new and existing hires.
• Verify your partners, suppliers, vendors and customers/clients.
• Read case studies for assessing Crederity Verified Program
• Educate people by sharing this post in your network.
• Give your feedback by writing a comment or contacting us.

Facebook is a very active social site which has heavy traffic and people from all the classes and generations regularly appear on these sites through their accounts and posts. Good networking is the best medium of highlighting your products, views, services and also getting support in context with certain critical issues. Small business with low capital investment has low budget for promotion and hence social sites can prove very helpful in gaining good business.

10 takeaways for Facebook marketing for small business:

• Do not haste, go slowly: To start with, promotion on Facebook should be done moderately and never aggressively. Instead go slow at the start. In the earlier weeks, the response may not be good, but consistent trying can lead to inquiries.
• Invest more time: Small business owners need to invest more time on Facebook promotions and respond to even the smallest of query as this will open your communicating doors with the buyers. Never let go any query unheeded as one Facebook account holder can divert others in his circle towards you. Direct communication is an important feature of Facebook promotions.
• Interact with your fans: Small business owners do not have too much fan following at the start. During this stage, it is important that each fan is treated on individual level and given importance. Slowly but steadily, this will carve out an impressive niche for you.
• No spamming: Facebook is totally against spamming and hence do not try to spam your users. This will create negative vibes about you on the Facebook.
• Take it as an experience: We want our promotions to get immediate response. But do not expect this on Facebook. The response will be slow. Rather treat the various responses and phases as an educational experiment and try evolving newer tricks of promotion.
• Do not go overboard for advertising: It is not necessary that lot of money is to be poured in advertising or high budget advertising gets good returns. Well planned strategy goes a long way in giving you good results. Check the target reach of Facebook and start with the first ad. Do not give aimless ads. In turn a long time goal should be taken into consideration while starting for ads. Ads given aimlessly can give no result and the promotion gets fizzled out in the middle.
• New Facebook page: Do not create many profiles on the Facebook which can lead to banning of your account. Instead create a new Facebook page to promote your product.
• Incentives and coupons: On the new page of Facebook, you can start advertising. But it is very important to induce your fans into purchasing and for this you can introduce various discount coupons or incentives for your buyers. This will certainly attract more traffic.
• Go for mobile subscriptions: Once the messages on Facebook appear on your mobile, you can immediately respond to them and the communication become faster. Although it is similar to Twitter, on Facebook you get a page instead of small space.
• Keep your fans engaged: Update your fans with the latest happenings in your business. Make a mention of events, successes which can establish a good rapport between you and the fans.

Things you should do if you run a small business/start up:

• Get a Verified Twitter Account for recruiting through Twitter
• Like our Crederity fan page to get more updates for small business.
• Contact us for Background Screening and Employment Verifications solutions.
• Get a Crederity Trusted Seal to increase sales for your business.
• Educate people by sharing this post in your network.
• Give your feedback by writing a comment or contacting us.

Recruitment is a very difficult function as although every company has an HR department specially dedicated to employment and management of staff, no one specially is trained to execute this responsible task. And when the company is on the look out for qualified and trained professionals for a very important post then it becomes all the more important to make the right selection.

Starting off initially for recruitment

Even then, there are some things which if properly followed can give good end results. The format for selection should be based on certain criteria’s and past experience as well. One of the important factors while deciding for a person is to check his duration of working with other companies. When you employ a person, he is given full training about the company’s working and culture. The company devotes time to this new employee and hence it is expected that he should stay long enough to be of any benefit for the company. Hence for this background check on the employee becomes very essential.

Increase in attrition

The companies are facing high rate in attrition as employees switch over the jobs every now and then which affects the stability of company’s workforce. In such a situation checking upon different aspects of employee and some other aspects become very necessary before recruitment.

Here are the 10 takeaways for effective recruitment:

1. Develop good content management system: Use Excel or Gist to manage the various contents of the company and make the information available at the proper moment.
2. Check out for employees on various links: Try for different social networking sites like linked in, Twitter, Facebook, Also find out various words or synonyms for putting in the classifieds on the various classified job options on the internet.
3. Dig out good profiles: Check out various profiles posted on these classifieds or on the networking sites and try to read in between lines to understand other human qualities apart from the obvious academic ones. Employee screening is very important to understand the suitability of the candidate and hence the background check should be done thoroughly.
4. Recruiting through Twitter: It’s just fair to follow people on twitter whose profile matches your requirement. This way you can get to know about that candidate more as a person apart from being professional. You can also say that this is one way of doing employee checks.
5. Go on resolutely: When you find someone or make a good contact then do not let any loose communication disturb the continuity. Follow the contact religiously so that the person you wish to hire respects your requirement and can start considering it positively.
6. Networking always: Even if some persons do not show any interest in your company, do not stop networking with them. Being in the same field, they might give you some good contacts or can think of working with you in the near future. So, just keep on bonding. There is always a chance.
7. Get in touch with the topmost: When you want to find out professionals in a particular field it is important that you know who is in the driving seat. Just manage to get in touch with the topmost professionals in that field, start developing good bonding. Soon, you have all the information about the leading performers in that field. Hiring comes later; first just get in touch as a social effort.
8. Ready for references: Always keep on asking friends or acquaintances for good references. Some of them will surely work for you.
9. Internal referral system: In every company, there are good and qualified employees. You can check with them if they have friends who studied with them or are equally qualified. This will make it easier for doing a background check.
10. Do it every day: Continue this activity almost daily without stop so that slowly you will start getting good information.

Things you should do as a recruiter/employer:

• Implement pre-employment verification
• Ask candidates to get resume verification
• Calculate the cost of a bad hire.
• Get a Verified Twitter Account for recruiting through Twitter.
• Educate people by sharing this post in your network.
• Give your feedback by writing a comment or contacting us.

A dwindling economy, clubbed with an inverse relationship between the job openings and job seekers, has made the job search scenario quite competitive. In the race to grab the few options open to them, seekers tend to pose themselves as what they really are not and what they never might become, either.

The exaggeration in the resume might vary from a small adjustment in the marks, to an experience they never had, to a designation in a company that never existed! Sometimes they might not lie; instead, might just hide a few details of their professional past. These little things will matter—and matter in the biggest way to companies who hire them!

Hiring an employee involves a lot of investment to the employer—from facilitating the recruitment and training, to the initial learning curve period. Such huge investments on the wrong candidate will reflect very badly on the company. The money and efforts invested turns out to be futile and the company’s reputation is also affected.

A global workforce makes it all the more important to focus more into your manpower. It is ultimately the main strength of the company and flaws would affect the company negatively. The growing instances of cab-drivers crimes and the involvement of some IT people in scandalous crimes have given shocks to the world. A decade ago, reputed companies were trusted blindly, but with their lack of proper employee screening, stand-alone incidents have led them to loss of public trust.

It is best to insulate your business from potential liability through proper pre-employement screening of potential candidates. It is most likely that applications may consist of fabrications. Only a thorough check will bring out the exaggerated resumes and the discrepancies involved.

Again, don’t stop at just verifying the current job/designation status of a candidate. Go in deeper; do a thorough check on: criminal background, references (the referee should be a valid person!), testimonials from collegues / teachers / clients, etc. A proper background screening, will help you hire the right candidate. Once this is done, you can be assured that the qualifications and achievements claimed in the résumé are not manipulated. This ensures that the person coming for the post is aptly qualified for it.

Do the following to avoid a bad hire…
Avoid Turnover: It will also help to avoid turnover rates in companies. One of the main financial problem faced by the companies today are increase in turnover. Proper employee check will let you know if the employee is a constant job-hopper or has misappropriated data in any manner which will lead to his/her termination in the near future.
Crime check: A detailed check into the employees past will help to avoid problems like theft and other malpractices within the office. There are various instances where the company has lost its reputation because of its employees’ involvement in crime. Such situations can be avoided.
Employee Morale: A proper employee check will boost the employer’s morale, as he can be confident of his own workforce. And it is equally assuring for the employees as it would assure them of a safe work place with trustworthy peers.
Productivity: Hiring the wrong candidate involves a lot of loss, including the productivity disruption that occurs during the person’s training, to his learning stage and again during his replacement. A perfect candidate would help a company avoid all such problems.

Hence a proper scrutiny is always a better option than blindly believing your prospective employee’s cooked up résumé. Falsifications, no matter how minor they seem to be, will always prove to be disastrous later. It is better to be equipped with a stronger work pool, of whom you can be confident.

How we can help

At Crederity, we verify information regarding identities, background check, pre-employment screening, education and employment verification, online checks, legalities, criminal checks, references, experiences, employment status… We also gather information from references directly and authenticate even them! If you are hiring through a recruitment agency, we will verify them as well!

If it’s a resume that has the Credulity Seal, you can trust it with your eyes closed! And if the resume lacks one, we can verify and seal it for you!

Invest in Crederity. Invest in trust!