As India’s data protection landscape evolves, hiring is entering a new era—one where efficiency can no longer come at the cost of trust, privacy, or compliance.
These themes formed the foundation of the People Matters × OnGrid Executive Roundtable, held in Bengaluru on 15 July 2026, where senior leaders from HR, Talent Acquisition, Compliance, and Technology came together to discuss “Hiring in the Age of DPDP: The Employment Credential Imperative.”
The session wasn’t about predicting the future. It was about understanding how hiring needs to evolve as organisations prepare for a consent-led approach to handling employment data under the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act.
The Question That Set the Tone
The discussion began with a deceptively simple question:
Who really owns employment history?
Is it the employee who built that professional journey? The organisation that created and maintained those records? Or the prospective employer trying to verify them?
While there wasn’t a unanimous answer, there was broad agreement that the role of organisations is changing. Instead of owning employment records, employers are increasingly becoming custodians of professional credentials—responsible for protecting them while enabling secure, consent-based access whenever required.
That shift, participants noted, could fundamentally change the way employment verification works in India.
Why Traditional Verification Needs a Rethink
Employment verification has traditionally relied on manual document exchange. Payslips are shared over email, experience letters are uploaded multiple times, and employment references often happen through phone calls or informal communication channels.
Although these practices have worked for years, they are becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile with evolving expectations around consent, data minimisation, transparency, and accountability.
As organisations align themselves with DPDP requirements, hiring workflows will need to move beyond document collection towards more structured and privacy-aware verification processes.
Employment Credentials Could Be the Missing Piece
One of the strongest themes to emerge from the discussion was the growing importance of trusted employment credentials.
Rather than asking candidates to repeatedly produce the same documents throughout their careers, organisations explored the possibility of portable, verified credentials that individuals can securely share with prospective employers after providing consent.
Such a model has the potential to simplify hiring while reducing fraud, improving candidate experience, and strengthening confidence in employment information. More importantly, it places individuals at the centre of the verification process by giving them greater visibility and control over how their professional data is shared.
Beyond Compliance
The conversation made it clear that DPDP is not simply another compliance exercise for HR teams.
Instead, it presents an opportunity to redesign hiring processes around trust.
Participants discussed how employment and income verification can evolve in a consent-driven environment, what changes organisations need to make across hiring workflows, and how verification can be scaled for high-volume, gig, contract, and blue-collar hiring without compromising privacy or operational efficiency.
There was also significant discussion around the role that employers, HR technology providers, verification partners, and policymakers must collectively play in building a trusted employment credential ecosystem.
A Shared Responsibility
One of the key takeaways from the roundtable was that no single organisation can build this future alone.
Creating a trusted hiring ecosystem will require collaboration between employers, technology providers, verification partners, and regulators. Common standards, secure technology, and consent-driven processes will all play an important role in making employment verification both faster and more reliable.
As hiring becomes increasingly digital, organisations that invest in trusted credential frameworks today will be better positioned to navigate tomorrow’s regulatory and business expectations.
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