Police verification, blood tests and financial background checks. It isn?t easy getting a job with the IT-ITeS industry these days. But stung by the swarm of fake CVs and wary of employee cybercrime, Indian companies in the tech sector are cracking down on bogus candidates in and effort to weed out the worst offenders.
It seems to be working. Several organisations have reported a significant drop in the number of applicants that misrepresent themselves in their CVs. Companies are getting complete background checks that include a thorough verification of educational qualifications, references and address, as well as experience certificate checks, among other checks. And that?s just for starters.
Agreeing that instances of fake CVs have come down, Kalpana Jaishankar, vice-president, human resources, operations & people development, Patni, says, ?Currently, of the total number of candidates that apply for jobs, 3-5% still provide false information in some form or another. The maximum is at the entry level, where candidates have one to three years? experience.?
According to experts, peer pressure often deludes candidates into thinking that because everyone else is faking their CVs it?s all right to do so. Some feel the need to enhance their achievements and hence present themselves in the most favourable, albeit dishonest, light. Whatever the reason, the problem of fake CVs has grown quite alarming.
According to a KPMG study last year, 15-24% of CVs in India were falsified. The offences typically include forged documents such as educational and employment certificates as well as salary slips, misrepresentation of past employment and inaccurate degree details. But now companies have found ways to catch up with those that provide fraudulent information?even after the person may have joined.
Says Aditya Narayan Mishra, general manager, Ma Foi Management Consultants Ltd: ?Most companies in IT and
BPO conduct background checks only after the candidate has joined. There are instances of a few IT companies firing candidates whose details prove to be false. However, not all companies terminate such employees immediately on coming to know of their fake CVs.? If the candidate has a good understanding of a project, then he or she may be terminated only after the project is over.
Not surprisingly, the closer scrutiny has led to the mushrooming of verification agencies that specialise in carrying out background checks on prospective employees. Their procedures are rigorous and their consultants well-trained in fraud detection. Top providers charge anywhere between Rs 1,500 and Rs 5,000 per employee, depending on the depth of investigation?sometimes even going so far as to unearth performance standards, criminal records, economic offences and undesirable personal habits. ?We outsource the work to a third party, which gives us the report in 21 days. It costs us Rs 5,000- Rs 10,000 per candidate,? reveals Kalpana.
Not all companies outsource this sensitive task, however. ?Mastek gets the candidates? verification check done in-house. As we draw from the same pool of candidates, we are no different from the rest of the industry. Some of the candidates are eliminated during our filtering process,? said Dinesh Maheshwary, chief capability officer, Mastek.
Background checks still have a long way to go because centralised and shared systems are not yet in place in India, say industry players. Nasscom has taken the first step in this direction by setting up a central database for all IT and BPO employees in India. This database is a reactive and proactive measure: reactive to the highly publicised data thefts from Indian BPOs, and proactive with a clear knowledge that India has to take steps to give western companies the confidence that private data is in safe hands.
Nasscom?s initiative to create, operate and maintain a national database of employees working in the IT-BPO industry, known as National Skills Registry (NSR), contains third-party verified personal, qualification and career information. ?More and more IT and ITeS companies are now hiring candidates only from Nascom?s National Skills Registry and are advising their employees to register with it,? says an industry player.
According to experts, with fake resumes or impersonators, it becomes increasingly difficult to recruit genuine talent, and this is the biggest problem faced by the IT-ITeS sector. From the largest organisation to the smallest, bad hiring practices tend to quietly cripple organisations and hurt the business. ?Companies that invest time to study the training practices and certifications of reputed staffing firms have a lower percentage of fake profiles in their database hire fewer wrong candidates,? Mishra adds.
The IT/ITeS industry is growing rapidly in India?and so are job opportunities. However, one of the greatest challenges for HR managers has been to ascertain that a candidate being recruited is what he says, that his CV is authentic and that the qualifications and work experience are true. Hence, a complete background check has become a prime need in an industry whose future lies in the hands of those it recruits.