India Inc ups snooping on staff

"A decade ago, reference check of candidates used to be quite basic but from last five to six years, this has been observed that most of the global and large organisations are very conscious on checking candidate's antecedents, which is deeper than a reference check", Sunil Goel, Director, GlobalHunt, a leading executive search firm, said.

"These reference checks are very popular in big MNCs but even large Indian conglomerate and mid-size organisations are also opting to this as they wish their businesses to be managed by reliable people", he said.

Apart from education, duration of employment, KRAs, team size, achievements and compensation are very important factors to be checked, he said.

The need for deeper checks has assumed importance as it had become quite common for candidates to give references of friends by claiming them as their bosses, he said.

Candidates sometime "claim their colleague's achievements as their own and overall they try to give a rosy picture which misleads future employers", he said.

It was found that professionals from small and mid-size organisations generally claim that their responsibilities included managing operations of India and all other SAARC countries. Whereas on verification, one gets to know that the company's business in other SAARC countries is either negligible or it has presence in one

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