Universities and Social Security Numbers

There is one question that we ask applicants that invariably gets them very nervous –What is your social security number? In this day of identity theft people are rightfully extremely cautious when giving out that information.

Why do we ask it? Well unfortunately virtually every college and university in the United States uses the social security number to catalog their graduates and they ask us for it in order to verify degrees. Believe it or not they also almost always ask for a birth date too!

An important part of our referrals to our client companies is a verification of any academic credentials that you have worked so very hard to achieve. We have all read and heard of the many people who claim to have college degrees that they have not earned. As we do not do the confirmation on a preemptive basis we do not need the number until we are ready to move forward but please understand why we and other recruiters ask you for that extremely confidential information. We keep all of our records in a secure locked environment with appropriate security systems and alarms in place. We do not commit the number to any type of on line data system or in any in house computer.