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The Great Indian CV Trick |
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Job-seekers are getting innovative while covering up the breaks in their career |
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Time of India, December 10, 2006
Curriculum Vitae is a big word. It is Latin. And, besides, job hunters scratch at their keypads trying to customise past experience into a potent CV.
Emmay HR chief operating officer Madhu Bhojwani says 80 per cent of the CVs either have inconsistencies or people embellish them based on what they think is attractive. It is so common a practice that Bhojwani talks of candidates who withdraw their CVs, saying: “Let me come back to you with another version.’’ It is often said that even chief financial officers are not beneath forging pre-employment certificates.
But there is a peculiar inconsistency that gains its relevance in today’s dynamic world, where employees are increasingly loyal to their own growth and requirement. It has to do with gaps in CVs, which could be an after-effect of quitting or losing one’s job.
These career breaks are then imaginatively covered up and explained away in CVs and during interviews. But such candidates may not be aware that companies are increasingly relying on verification companies such as First Advantage to dig out a candidate’s real profile.
As Daljit Singh, corporate director at Bharti Tele Ventures, says: “We go for background verification for middle-level recruitments and above.’’
It would appear companies ask candidates to furnish their CVs merely to have a good laugh at their expense. A 20-something BPO candidate recently made the grave mistake of omitting his previous company’s name in a CV version sent to an HR consultant; he, instead, showed it as a gap. By some quirk of fate, it was unfortunately forwarded to the same company and he was immediately tracked down.
Another 25-year-old candidate for an IT job also manufactured a gap in his CV as he wanted to hide his employment with a non-IT company — he thought it was not relevant — with equally disastrous results.
Candidates hide employment to portray experience only at noted firms, says Nipa Modi, director at First Advantage, Asia Pacific. But they are also known to deal with an awkward period in other innovative ways.
Background checks reveal that candidates sometimes conveniently forget to mention the exact month in the “years of service’’ column. “They may just write, say, 1997 to 1999 where they might have worked between December 1997 and January 1999,’’ says Santrupt Misra, director at A V Birla Group. Alternatively, candidates could fill a gap of six months by stretching three months into the earlier job and the other three in the next. Misra, however, says he has also encountered an unapologetic “I am a man of leisure’’ explanation.
He informs that excuses for gaps in CVs happen across the board and are level-neutral. There is, though, a serious omission that makes verification companies essential; that happens when they have to rummage through data for a candidate’s criminal records. This is a practice that is common in developed nations and is now being duplicated in India.
A 30-something candidate was recently found to have hidden a hit-and-run accident. He made up a fictitious document to prove that he worked during the murky time. But, then, this is a fringe instance. Most reasons are more amusing than grim.
COFFEE BREAK
The list of interesting coverups is growing longer by the day
I was down with a medical problem
I had an accident
I had to sacrifice my job as I had to support the family in a crisis
I took an educational break/sabbatical
I became an entrepreneur
I left for an expedition to the Himalayas
My brother was ill so I had to take care of him
LADIES ONLY
My in-laws did not allow me to work
I needed a break to look after the children
-- Rucha Biju Chitrodia | TNN
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Look before you hire |
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Computer Express, September25, 2006 |
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Vinita Gupta analyses the significance of pre-employment screening for the Indian IT industry.
Background screening of employees is crucial for Indian IT companies servicing North American and European clients. More than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a formal policy of doing background screening of their employees. Pre-employment screening is necessary in IT companies because most of their employees have access to personal information of clients and companies want to verify the credentials before employing them. Also most companies think of their staff as assets and hence invest their time and money to ensure that these people are highly productive and also competent.
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It is common for people to provide false information on their CVs to make it look good and impressive. The wrong information is sometimes harmless—for instance they might mention some recreational hobbies such as football or cricket to demonstrate their ability to be a “team player”, but there can also be serious falsification crossing legal or ethical boundaries. Typical examples of these are increase in compensation, stating higher designations, fake employment, making up job responsibilities and false qualifications, etc.
As employees become more deceitful in their CVs and job applications, companies have become more rigorous in checking the facts. Today there are many organisations specialising in pre-employment screening of employees like First Advantage Quest Research. “Background screening has become a part of the standard outsourcing contract and therefore Indian IT companies have proactively adopted it as a part of their business process,” says Ashish Dehade, MD, First Advantage Quest Research.
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Ashish Dehade
Managing Director,
First Advantage
(West Asia)
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“The percentage of candidates misrepresenting facts on their CVs is higher with those organisations that do not conduct
background screening” |
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Misrepresentation of facts
Background screening is a relatively new practice in India. The high growth in the Indian IT sector is compounded by limited availability of talent. “The boom in the Indian IT industry has led to the rise in employment in IT companies hence people tend to fake information, including educational qualifications, so that they can get a job faster and in a better company with higher salary.” Dehade adds that fake resumes are not IT sector specific but a universal problem spanning across sectors and geographies, including mature markets like the US.
“It has been noticed that the percentage of candidates misrepresenting facts on their CVs has been significantly higher with those organisations that do not conduct background screening or do relatively less intensive background checks,” points out Dehade. |
Kalyani Shastry, Senior Consultant with StantonChase International believes that as a result of accelerated growth experienced by IT companies and stringent client demands, performance is measured and competition is fierce, a thorough background check for any hire is the need of the hour to maintain the competitive advantage in this environment. “However the challenge for the HR department of the company in identifying these people lies in the sheer numbers, time constraints and the mushrooming of lesser known firms across the country that are difficult to track,” she avers.
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Extent of false information
The extent of false information ranges from 20 percent to 25 percent and in most of the cases this misinformation is regarding their education, family background, and details of present and past employment. “Through the verifications that we have done over a few years, we have found that one out of six candidates misrepresent facts on their resumes. These misrepresentations can be of different types. For instance if we look at the education side, fake qualifications are shown or pass percentage/class is changed to show better results or year of passing is changed,” informs Dehade.
According to Shastry less than one percent of the applicants to any company will have provided fraudulent information. She says, “The most common falsifications are educational qualifications, duration of employment in the past with a previous employer, naming a non-existent firm as a previous employer and fudging the projects/technologies worked upon.”
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Kalyani Shastry
Senior Consultant,
StantonChase International
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| “We also reach out to our own network within the industry to assess the perception of the individual with his current and past employer ” |
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Types of verification
Pre-employment verification is tailor-made and depends on a company’s requirement. In most cases it is verification of present residential address, last educational, past employment and certain checks like the reference checks, criminal record checks, credit checks, etc.
There are specialised background checking agencies that provide entire verification of the candidate’s resume. For instance, for educational qualification verification the background checks agency will go to the university / institution directly and get the details/documents verified.
| The screening process |
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Applications of selected candidates is provided by companies to the pre-employment screening agency to verify their details. “Once the application of the candidate is received by us, it is scrutinised and our team of investigators carry out various investigations required to be done,” says Kumar. He informs that people who carry out pre-employment screening are trained investigators who are very polite and courteous and have knowledge of the local language.
“We ensure complete transparency by ensuring that the candidates have furnished their authorisation for this process. Also we do not recommend our clients to get into the private details of the candidates and advice them to structure a programme which focusses on their professional credential verifications,” says Dehade.
At StantonChase, there is a fully secure reference check process incorporated. At the first level, they reach out to the referees provided by the individual. “We also reach out to our own network within the industry to assess the perception of the individual with his current and past employer,” adds Shastry.
Growing significance
Most IT companies are doing pre-employment screening of their employees. This can be proved by certain figures provided by agencies which has handled more than 100 clients and over the last two years have done verification of about 50,000 people all over India. |
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First Advantage Quest Research deals with most major IT organisations in the country and almost one fifth of all its verifications have been for the IT industry. Dehade says,
“We have been in this industry for over five years and have invested in people, technology, infrastructure and have evolved processes and networks with the concerned institutions that help us to manage this very complex business efficiently.”
Background screening of candidates is becoming crucial for the well-being of the BPO industry in India. CFC International has hired a pre-employment screening agency to conduct full background verification of applicants like police verification and checking educational certificates. “Our background verification process does not just centre on calling up the applicant’s previous employer and asking for his/her details,” says Ruvina Singh, Senior VP, HR, Training and Administration, CFC International. She points out that one of the areas where people fake is usually in their certificates and documents. |
Ruvina Singh
Sr VP, HR,
Training and Admin, CFC International
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| “We also reach out to our own network within the industry to assess the perception of the individual with his current and past employer ” |
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Role of recruitment agency
When employees are hired through a recruitment agency it is not responsible for carrying out pre-employment screening. “The responsibility of verification is with the company which is finally recruiting them and the recruitment agency does not carry out pre-employment verification,” asserts Kumar. Dehade points out, “Most clients we work with do not allow their recruitment agencies to conduct background screening of candidates due to the obvious conflict of interest.” According to him some recent revelations of a few recruitment agencies helping candidates to misrepresent facts on their resumes have made the concerned organisations more diligent in this respect.
| Verification process differs |
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The verification process varies with the type of check that is required to be done. “However, it does not depend on the levels for which these checks are conducted. But we do ensure that relatively senior people from our organisation verify credentials of senior candidates whose background we may be checking,” states Dehade.
Market in India
The background screening market has been growing over the last two to three years but it is difficult to estimate its exact size. “There is no organised and credible industry data available but we conduct close to a million checks per annum. And we are confident that due to the increased economic activity and security concerns, this number would increase rapidly,” acknowledges Dehade.
So whether you represent a Fortune 500 or small business organisation, hiring qualified honest employees is critical to your success. Hence a pre-employment screening check can help you get them onboard quickly and easily.
With inputs from Aishwarya Ramani |
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Pvt cos call to scan employees' history Employees’ background verification firms now get calls
from banks, insurance and hospitality companies, besides BPOs and call centres |
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Mumbai Mirror, July 31, 2006, Sanjiv Kumar |
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New Delhi: Increasing instances of frauds in BPOs and fake CVs in the market have forced private firms, especially in the IT sector, to approach background screening firms to verify details of job candidates in depth before they put them on the rolls.
"Besides IT and BPO companies, banking, insurance, hospitality and manufacturing firms are also keen on the background screening exercise before they recruit people. But this trend is largely confined to the private sector,"' First Advantage Quest Research Managing Director Yogesh Bhura told Mumbai Mirror.
He said what is positive is that domestic companies have recognised the need for a pre-employment check to counter attrition and the theft of data. Interest shown by other industries would definitely fuel the pre-employment screening business, which was alien to companies in India till 2001.
Estimating that about 13 per cent of people who apply for jobs claim false educational and work experience, First Advantage Quest Research, a global pre-employment background screening services firm, claimed that about 15,000 to 20,000 verifications are done annually in India. Home-grown FMCG major Dabur India Ltd takes assistance of professional and investigative agencies while hiring people at some level, its spokesperson confirmed. When contacted companies in banking, insurance and hospitality sectors, they admitted the help of background screener in recruitment process but declined to divulge the details. Pointing out that as they go global, Indian companies are opting for background check because perceived risks from having employees with dubious backgrounds could dent their global image, experts said screeners conduct checks like education, employment, database and criminal records, if any, and these tests are conducted with the full knowledge of a prospective employee.
Talking to this newspaper, Team Computers HRD Director C V Prakash said the company has hired a Mumbai-based background screener to validate the claims of candidates in terms of experience, exposure and work profile before their recruitment. Similarly, IT majors like TCS, Patni, CSC and Electronic Data Systems do it too.
Currently, large IT firms spend anywhere between Rs 3,000 and Rs 6,000 per candidate, while mid-size companies shell out between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000 per candidate. Bangalore-based recruitment firm TVA Infotech revealed that of 100 false bio-data, 99 candidates fail to make entry into any company, while one smart chap with fake CV manages the show. "But hiring volume in the IT and BPO is so large that even a small percentage tends to get magnified," TVA Infotech CEO
Gautam Sinha said.
"Companies should share data on the people blacklisted to stop this nuisance," Sinha added. |
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As frauds increase, companies turn to background screeners |
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4th July 2006, Zee News |
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New Delhi, July 05: With call centre frauds and the issue of fake CVS hitting headlines and companies trying to stay ahead of their prospective employees' street smartness, it is the background screening companies which are rubbing their hands in glee.
Initially, background check by the screening companies was limited to BPO and it sectors, but now other companies, small and big also want to know the background of their employees.
"We are receiving enquiries from all the sectors of the economy including small and medium sized companies. Background screening is being sought by service sectors like banking, insurance, hospitality and manufacturing," says Yogesh Bhura, managing director, First Advantage – Asia, a leading pre-employment background screening company.
Candidates who intend to falsify their credentials are using new and innovative techniques to bypass background verification. For example candidates are using services of "fake companies" to fill their work experience. These "companies" give experience certificate for a fee - and they also verify such credentials to sound genuine!
But background companies believe that they worked a way around this. "A focused approach and research initiative allows us to identify new processes to be ahead in this game. For instance, we have over the years compiled a list of fake companies which we share with our clients as a preventive measure" says Bhura. |
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HSBC pays for lax background check |
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K Raghu, DNA |
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Friday, June 30, 2006 01:04 IST |
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BANGALORE: It was a lapse that HSBC India made in a hurry and is regretting at leisure. The bank has discovered that Nadeem Kashmiri, the employee who leaked personal data of 20 UK customers and caused them a loss of almost Rs2 crore, had been fired by another company within 20 days of joining.
HSBC has found that the certificates on the basis of which Kashmiri was hired were fake. He had been given the marching orders by outsourcing firm Accenture for this very reason, but he got away scot-free with this deception at nearby HSBC.
The use of fake certificates and recommendations in job applications is old hat. But with increasing pressure on IT service and BPO firms to rapidly recruit the numbers to feed their growth and stay ahead of the competition, thorough background checks have become a casualty.
"Kashmiri used fake mark sheets to apply for a job at Accenture that required a bachelor's degree. But he was caught soon".
Accenture officials were unavailable for comment. An HSBC spokesperson refused comment saying the matter is under investigation.
HSBC suffered because there was no background check on Kashmiri. But industry insiders say that even when there are checks, they just aren't effective. "Many industries conduct checks simultaneously with the employee's joining. This leaves open a window of time in which a fraud can happen," said one. And when the person joining is a fresher, the check is limited to qualifications.
Even if there is a background check, a person with no past criminal record can also breach security," said Yogesh Bhura, South Asia managing director for First Advantage – Asia, a global pre-employment background screening services firm. Kashmiri is a case in point.
First Advantage estimates that about 13 per cent of people who apply for jobs claim false educational and work experience, an average seen in other countries as well. There are other problems. "Currently, a background check takes about six weeks," said BS Murthy, CEO of Human Capital, an HR firm.
This problem, he said, could be solved if universities put details of marks on a centralised database and charge firms to verify online. "They can earn money and the time taken for verification can be reduced," he said.
Gautam Sinha, CEO of TVA Infotech, said, "Companies should share data on the people blacklisted so that a clear message is sent to all those who adopt malpractices."
NASSCOM is building a national skill registry for IT employees to create a database of employees that employers can access. But till these steps are implemented, experts advise firms to strengthen their own security systems, especially in the absence of a data protection law.
"Companies should adopt best security practices and have preventive measures keeping in mind the absence of a data protection act," said cyber law expert Pavan Duggal. |
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Dishonest staffing firms hamper screening fake CVs |
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Indian Express, April 29,2006 |
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The menace of fake CVs was first identified when professional screening firms like Quest Research First Advantage, launched their pre-employment screening services in India in 2001-2002.
MNC tech companies were the early adapters to this outsourced process in line with their stringent screening policies that prevail in their home countries. The bigger Indian tech companies were slow to respond(probably due to cost issues) but eventually they did, bowing to the mounting pressure from their North American clients.
Given, however, the limited abilities of screening companies, technical skills cannot be evaluated. All that they do is to do a verification of dates of employment and positions held as well as the authenticity of educational degrees.
At times, they also work with the local police to establish if the potential candidate has a criminal history or not. The police are not known to be coopertaive though and often charge exorbitant fees.
The technical ability of the potential candidate is left to be judged by the recruiting company. This is where dishonest staffing firms come into play. Sometimes, they doctor CVs to meet the demands of the hiring clients and on some occasions, they connive with employees within the hiring firm to do the same.
The larger tech companies are more vulnerable to the menace of fake CVs owing to their ramping up pressures. In the context of their larger demand for candidates, they end up working with several staffing firms which tends to dilute quality. The smaller ones simply cannot afford to screen.
The other aspect of this alarming phenomenon is the questionable integrity levels of some hiring managers within the client companies.
It is an open secret that many HR managers (especially in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon) own ''benami'' firms through which CVs are routed.
Still some others use ''favoured'' staffing firms where the fees are shared between the firm and the hiring manager(s). Most staffing firms are not members of ERA and therefore they cannot be regulated by this body. Besides, the ERA does not have the teeth to discipline its own members. NASSCOM along with NSDL is reportedly building a database of tech workers but there is no compulsion on the part of the individual to enrol.
It is quite possible that the ''rotten eggs'' will Consciously choose to stay outside this database. Convergys fired its entire HR team last year but it is believed that all the disengaged individuals found new jobs in next to no time.
Tech companies need to look within if they are really serious about expunging this demon from their system. |
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Fake a CV and work with MNCs |
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Dhruv Bonnerjee & Faye D'souza |
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Moneycontrol.com April 18, 2006 |
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Corporate India is under attack and this time, the attack is from within. Much to their horror, companies are discovering a large number of their workforce has made its way in on the back of forged documents for experience and other qualifications. Some estimates say every third curriculum vitae, CV that is coming in, could be fake or forged. Many employees are now being sacked and at least two leading IT companies have filed criminal complaints.
But the malice may run much deeper and corporates have reason to worry. On March 22, 2006, Wipro, one of the biggest Indian IT firms sacked 25 employees. But this had nothing to do with their performance. A day later, Wipro lodged police complaints against not just the employees, but also the placement agencies that were responsible for them being there in the first place.
The employees in their CVs had given incorrect information about their work experience. An internal investigation by Wipro revealed a nexus with employment agencies. They had helped the employees provide false certificates and letters of previous employment - 10 such recruitment agencies have been dragged to the cops and another 20 have been blacklisted by Wipro.
Wipro found to its horror, that in some cases, employees had shown in their work experience records, having worked for companies that did not even exist.
Vice President, Strategic Sourcing, Wipro Technologies, Achuthan Nair had never expected a routine internal audit to turn this ugly. The human resources, HR department at Wipro was checking its CVs of employees. Suddenly, Nair noticed a pattern among the CVs. Nair told CNBC-TV18, "The language and the kind of education backgrounds they had, their work experience and even the companies where they had worked - everything was similar."
So much so, that even the spelling mistakes in many resumes were the same. It was enough to make Nair suspicious and he dug deeper. The trail led him to over 30 placement agencies from whom Wipro had hired some of its employees.
Further investigations revealed the entire plot. The organisations from where these employees had claimed to have worked for two years did not even exist. What's more, Wipro had been relying on these very agencies for its preemployment background checks. The placement agencies had created these fake software firms, which existed only on paper. And for a price, they were accreditating the work experiences of the employees.
Indian corporates have a reason to worry. A KPMG study on fraud says 15%-24% of CVs in India are fake and one out of three cvs misrepresent facts. Entities that fight this menace say the number could be as high as 30%.
KPMG released its India Fraud Survey Report 2006, that had covered over a thousand organisations across India. The findings of the KPMG report and the Wipro incident confirmed the reality on ground zero. Scrutiny revealed that close to 24% of CVs comprised forged documents, outright lies about previous employment and incomplete degrees.
KPMG survey found the IT, financial entertainment and telecom sectors face the highest risk and as is the case with Wipro, the largest exposure to fraud was from their own employees. In 13% of the cases observed, the fraud risk was because no background checks had been conducted on the employees.
Anil Roy has spent over thirteen years as an expert in fraud management and forensics. He says only 20% of the industry is doing proper background checks. Practice director, forensic services, Grant Thornton, Anil Roy says, "The top firms are doing their checks but fly-by-night ones are cutting costs. They open up 'mom and pop' shops and then work on background checks using a team of two people. How can it be possible, that two people are doing background checks for two hundred employees? These agencies performing checks for low costs, do not do due dilligence."
He adds,the reason why BPOs have come under the spotlight is because they are the ones driving background checks in India. "There are fake CVs in all industries but only BPOs are under spotlight because they are conducting checks seriously."
But the past has a way of catching up wih people - criminal pasts, forged documents, loan defaults - all skeletons come tumbling out of the closet, as background check agencies investigate employees' pasts.
While requests for background checks are still trickling in, he says corporates need to realise the danger of having within the system, someone who's very fundamentals are forged. he feels, the industry should realise the threats of hiring people with a criminal past.
Lakhs of individuals want to ride the wave of India's successful IT and BPO story and what makes background checks difficult, according to First Advantage – Asia, a global agency is the lack of networks among Indian enforcement agencies.
Managing Director, First Advantage – Asia, Yogesh Bhura agrees and says, "Background checks still have a long way to go because systems are not yet in place. In the US, one only has to run a check on fingerprints etc but here it's not that simple. Systems to facilitate background checks are not in place in India."
Three months ago, Uncovered found someone who was willing to go through the entire exercise and prove how easy it is to subvert the system. A 23 year old who faked his CV and worked with three BPOs. He came back with horror stories of zero background checks and placement agencies endorsing misrepresentation of facts.
And really it is that easy - in October 2005, Ramesh Sharma set out with a CV, services to render and an ulterior motive. He got jobs with BPOs and then find out what damage can really be done by an insider. Sharma says, "Placement agency asked me to fake employment details. I have worked in an ad agency and a TV production house but then I showed them in my CV that I was working for my uncle's firm for two years. I'm also a postgradute but in the CV I showed myself to be a Bcom graduate but no one checked my original documents."
So-called placement agencies have sprung up all over the country with offices in narrow bylanes and advertisement splashed across papers. But Sharma landed up at a reputed placement agency for screening level number one. He landed his first BPO job. A month later and no one had contacted the organisation, where he had claimed to have worked. What's more, he found the company dealing with high security data, credit card numbers etc. Now, you know why BPOs are ripe grounds for scams.
Sharma says, "I got a job with the first BPO and there the sales sheet and other valuable documents were just lying around. No background checks were done on me and I was told that only after six months, do they do any checks on people." So the result was that in two months, he got two jobs. And then he decided to try just one last time. The organisation was Verve Communication and the firm made calls to customers in the United States for satellite TV connections.
He spent three months in Verve but no one called to check on his past and sharma was shocked by security conditions inside. Sharma recalled, "It was very easy to take the data home. Everyone used to do it. I was there only for two months and within two months itself I had access to all kinds of data. and of course there were no background checks done on me." So in three months and three BPOs later, Sharma has an entire database of customers in the US and UK, their credit card numbers, phone numbers and passport details.
Another solution to keeping tabs on employees of BPOs is finding it difficult to take off. A national database of BPO employees launched by Nasscom and depository NSDL. An employee would have to add himself to the database after a mandatory background check organised by NSDL. He would then have to reveal his records to every new employer. The success of the database depended on participation, which is something that has not yet happened.
Roy explains, "There will actually be two parallel lines for employing people for the industry. One from the database and one from the open market. Those people, who are fudging their databases will go to the organisations who are not making it mandatory for people to become a part of this database. So there will still be fake CVs floating around."
Sources in the industry reveal that, many software firms are silently firing employees with problem CVs and yet Wipro and IBM are one of the few organisations, that have taken the first step to bring an end to this racket. But what's to stop employees from the rest of the organisations, who have been fired from quietly slipping into their next job?
Corporate India will need to nip what seems to have already become a problem that is fast spiralling out of control. Otherwise, industries that are heavily dependant on human capital, could be facing anything from malpractice to a lot of embarrassment. |
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Fake CVs now hit retail, bank & insurance cos |
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The Economic Times, Mumbai, 04 April 2006 |
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10-12% Of Recruits Fudge Resumes |
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Shelley Singh NEW DELHI |
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EVEN as India Inc continues its hiring spree, it is having to cope with the growing menace of smart alecks fudging their CVs. The problem is not restricted to the IT and BPO industry, which adds about 1,00,000 new staff every year, but has spread across retail, banking, insurance and other sectors. These sectors hire about 2,00,000 employees a year. According to industry estimates, 10-12% of the recruits submit fake CVs, fake reference letters, fake certificates or are simply overstating skills and experience.
The IT industry spends an average of Rs 25,000 in recruiting a candidate. The average spend on 1,00,000 recruits comes to Rs 250 crore a year. Overall, for the 2,00,000 jobs in the hot sectors, the industry spends over Rs 400 crore a year in hiring candidates, and there are quite a few bad apples among the lot. Fresh recruits to replace those who forged documents only adds to the cost. Most of the cases are among those with one-to-three years of experience.
US firm First Advantage – Asia receives 45,000 employee screening requests a month. About 35% are from the IT and BPO industries and the rest from banking, retail and insurance. The background screening business, which was nonexistent till a few years ago, is now estimated to be about Rs 75-100 crore a year, thanks to large number of fake resumes. First Advantage, Verifacts, KPMG and Global Screening Services offer employee background check services.
When asked about the problem, Yogesh Bhura, MD, FAQR told ET: “Potential recruits are fudging past employment and education credentials. Usually, fakes look better than the original. Companies want us to check that the people hired have the qualifications they claim.’’ Throwing light on the issue of fake CVs, Achuthan Nair, V-P, strategic sourcing, Wipro Technologies, said: “There are certain organisations which see demand for candidates in specific sectors, and play consultants to them, often fudging their CVs to make a quick buck.’’
Seeing the boom in recruitment, over 1,500 HR vendors have sprung up across the metros in past couple of years.
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Fudged ur record? In for trouble Cos Run Check On Staff; Verification Agencies Roped In
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By : PP Thimmaya in Bangalore The Economic Times January 24, 2006 |
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YOU FUDGED your records to land that ‘must have’ job? Be careful. The big brother is watching. Increasing concerns about data security and desire for a high integrity work force are driving India Inc to increasingly seek the services of verification agencies to run a check through their employees previous records: educational and employment.
Companies are increasingly tightening the screws on the whole employee verification process and making it a very stringent procedure indeed. Estimates for the IT/ ITES industry reveal that 15-17% of the people have discrepancies in their records with 70% of them relating to false previous employment record and the balance to false educational qualifications. The figures for BPO sector alone is higher, at around 20%.
Call it the globalization effect or a business imperative, MNCs especially from the US are very particular about employee verification and this extends even to employees in India. Ms Nipa Modi, Business Development Manager, First Advantage Quest, an employee verification firm, says that with increasing offshoring there is a lot of confidential data being transferred and companies want minimum risk thereby going for stringent employee verification.
The current infrastructure in the country does not permit for verification to done in a systematic manner. Unlike in the West, there is no concept of a social security number in India to provide ready background details. As Mr Natarajan, VPHR, Quest Engineering, says, “ the basic integrity of our employees is very important as our clients are very sensitive about any loss of data especially in the area of high-end engineering design.”
All this does not come cheap as Natarajan says, it spends around $150 – 200 per employee for verification. |
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