Pre-hire documents and background-check inputs

This is not legal advice. It does not state what Indian law requires every employer to collect, how long to keep papers, or what consent wording is valid. There is no nationwide packing list in this article. Pending SME review. This article remains a draft. Treat the lists below as operational categories organisations may collect after an offer and before or during a background check — not as a mandate and not as a verification product.

The employee onboarding checklist owns post-offer joining tasks: remaining papers, access, and day-one HR work after someone is being onboarded. This page is the pre-hire packet: identity, education, prior employment, and address inputs a verifier or HR may ask for while the person is still a candidate. Product context sits on Dayzen recruitment (offers and applications) and Dayzen onboarding (the new-joiner path after the packet). Dayzen does not perform background verification. It does not run police checks, education verifiers, or employment referees. If your organisation uses a BGV vendor, that work lives outside this product.

What a pre-hire packet is for

A pre-hire packet is a named set of copies and facts you ask the candidate to provide so a human (HR, TA, or an external verifier) can start a check you have already decided to run. It is not an employee activation gate. Activation, remaining join documents, and “ready to activate” belong later, on onboarding and its checklist. Mixing the two is how candidates get the same PAN upload twice and joiners still cannot log in.

Write the purpose in one sentence before you send the request. Typical operational purposes organisations use: confirm the person is who they said they are, confirm education claims that the offer depended on, confirm prior employment dates or last designation, and confirm a current or permanent address for correspondence. If you cannot finish that sentence, do not add a category “because other companies do BGV.”

The packet should list categories, not a fishing expedition. Ask for the smallest set that serves the stated purpose. Extra scans sitting in a recruiter inbox are still personal data you must protect operationally — access, storage, and deletion are process decisions for your counsel and privacy owners, not rules this page will invent.

Category 1: identity

Identity papers help a reviewer match a name, photograph, or identifier to the person you offered. Organisations may ask for a government-issued photo identity and, separately, identifiers they already use (for example a PAN copy where tax processing is a later purpose). This article will not say which identifier is mandatory and will not claim Aadhaar is required for every hire. After someone is an employee, field hygiene for PAN, Aadhaar, and bank details is a different article; here you only decide whether an identity copy belongs in the pre-hire request.

Operational habits that reduce mess:

• Ask for one primary photo identity plus one secondary if your verifier’s intake form actually needs two. Do not ask for five IDs “in case.”
• Match the legal name on the offer. If the identity document uses a different spelling, record both spellings as a fact, do not silently pick one.
• Store the file against the candidate or application ID, not in a shared drive named “BGV dump.”
• Do not treat a stored scan as proof that a government database was queried. Dayzen does not query UIDAI or any identity registry.

If identity is already in the offer-to-onboarding handoff, do not re-collect it as a new hunt. Point the verifier at what TA already holds. Re-collection is a privacy cost and a duplicate-file risk.

Category 2: education

Education papers are certificates, marksheets, or degree letters that support claims the hiring decision used. Organisations may collect them when the role depended on those claims, and skip them when it did not. There is no universal rule here that every employer must verify every degree.

Ask for the credential that matches the CV line you relied on. A marksheet for a class that was not a hiring criterion is padding. If the verifier needs an institution address or a registration number, put that on the intake form instead of asking the candidate to photograph every page of every semester.

Education checks fail operationally when the name on the certificate does not match the offer name and nobody recorded the alias. Fix the alias in the packet. Do not open a second candidate because “the degree is under a different name.”

Category 3: prior employment

Prior-employment papers are relieving letters, experience letters, last payslips, or appointment letters from earlier employers that support dates, designation, or last-drawn pay if you used those facts. Organisations may collect them when the offer or the check depends on employment history. They should not collect a full career archive when the check is only “last employer, last designation, dates.”

Be explicit about what “prior employment” means in your request:

• Last employer only, or a named number of previous employers.
• Whether you need a relieving letter now, or a dated undertaking that it will follow, if your policy allows joining with that open item.
• Whether payslips are in scope. Payslips contain pay data; collect them only if the stated purpose needs them.

A still-employed candidate may not have a relieving letter yet. That is an open item with an owner, not a second identity. Pass “pending relieving, expected date X” in the handoff. Onboarding can collect the paper later if the joining checklist says so. Do not block the whole pre-hire packet on a document that cannot exist yet — unless written policy says no check starts without it.

Category 4: address

Address papers are proofs of current or permanent address organisations may collect for correspondence, emergency contact logistics, or a verifier’s address check. Typical operational examples include a utility bill, bank statement, or other document your intake form names. This page will not list which proofs are legally sufficient anywhere in India. Name the proofs your process actually accepts, and accept those.

Collect current address if the check or HR correspondence needs it. Collect permanent address only if you have a purpose. Do not copy both “because the form has two boxes.” If the person lives in employer housing or is relocating, record that as a fact so the verifier does not treat a temporary stay as a mismatch.

What this packet is not

It is not consent-law advice, a retention schedule, or a completed-check certificate. Whether you need written consent, what notice to give, how long to keep failed-candidate files or hired reports, and who may delete them are legal and organisation decisions. Ask counsel. Do not paste this article into a consent form. Operationally: know where files live and that a recruiter laptop folder is a bad store. A folder of PDFs is inputs. A completed check is a dated report from a named verifier. Dayzen does not produce that report. Uploading copies into HR software is not government filing. Do not tell a candidate that submitting papers to you is a department process.

Who collects, who verifies, who stores

Name three roles even in a small company:

1. Collector — usually TA or HR operations. Sends the request, receives files, checks completeness against the category list (pages present, name readable), files against the candidate ID.
2. Verifier — internal specialist or external BGV vendor. Uses the packet. Returns a report. Dayzen is not this role.
3. Store owner — whoever controls the folder or ATS attachments so the files are not copied into five WhatsApp groups.

The collector’s completeness check is not verification. “We have four PDFs” is not “education confirmed.” If the vendor waits on a missing page, that is a packet gap, not a failed check. Recruitment assembles what the verifier asked for. Onboarding later runs joining tasks on the checklist. Do not send the candidate two competing lists in the same week unless you split them on purpose: pre-hire packet now, joining packet closer to day one.

Privacy as an operating habit, not a statute recap

Handle pre-hire files as sensitive by default. Practical habits:

• Share with the verifier on a named channel, not a public link that never expires.
• Do not CC the hiring manager on full identity scans unless the manager’s job truly needs them. Managers usually need “check in progress / clear / hold,” not the Aadhaar image.
• Do not paste identity numbers into interview-feedback comments or offer-approval chat.
• When a candidate withdraws or is rejected, follow your written retention rule. This page will not invent that rule.

Use education copies for the education check, not as a birthday-list source of date of birth. If another team wants “all KYC,” ask which purpose they have — often a yes/no that documents arrived. These habits are not a reading of any privacy statute.

Status language: requested, received (completeness checked), with verifier, report in (open items named), or honest not started. Do not mark “in BGV” because someone mentioned it on a call. If policy allows joining with a named pending check, write the exception. If policy forbids activation until the report is clear, that gate belongs on the activation-document article and the onboarding checklist — not as a silent extra in recruitment.

Handoff to onboarding without duplicating the joining list

When the offer is accepted, pass an inventory of what already exists and which BGV items are still open. Onboarding starts from the gap. Join-time tasks (bank form, remaining letters) stay on the onboarding checklist — do not paste these four categories in as if they were new. Dayzen recruitment can hold applications, offers, and attachments. Dayzen onboarding runs the new-joiner pipeline. Neither is a background-check engine. Do not tell a candidate the HRMS will verify them.

A pre-hire packet is inputs for a check you chose to run. It is not a legal catalogue, not an activation switch, and not something Dayzen performs. Keep it as categories with a purpose. Leave joining tasks on the onboarding checklist.

Stop this article at the packet. Verification outcomes, consent wording, retention years, and nationwide “must collect” lists are out of scope until an SME and counsel say otherwise. Until then, this remains a draft.