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companies in By Anuj Chopra | Correspondent of The Christian Science
Monitor from the October 8, 2008 edition Yet in cities across The perps? A fast-growing, wide-reaching ring of "CV
cheats." These are job applicants so hungry for "When there are [fewer] jobs on offer and more candidates
chasing them, many indulge in embellishing their résumés," says Ashish
Dehade, the West Asia managing director of First Advantage, a fraud detection
company based in California that serves more than 900 multinationals in
India. In the past several years of India's IT and outsourcing boom – which has created millions of new jobs – CV discrepancies have seen the highest increase in the past 15
months, Mr. Dehade continues. According to First Advantage, 1 in 5 résumés checked during the
second quarter of 2008 had employment-related discrepancies, compared with 1
in 6 résumés in the first quarter. In the outsourcing industry, 1 in 6
résumés contains inaccurate information. One reason for the rise may be the declining growth rate in the
IT sector, which has slipped from 30 percent since the start of the year to
about 21 to 24 percent, according to NASSCOM. Meanwhile, Having fewer new spots to fill, many companies are now looking
primarily for experienced professionals. With engineering colleges across It's not just fresh graduates, but also experienced
professionals who indulge in CV embellishment. Last year, First Advantage
discovered that a senior candidate, who was the head of a division in one
India's largest IT firms, had submitted bogus degree certificates from IIM
Ahmedabad and IIT Mumbai – two top Indian
management and engineering institutes. He had held his position for 20 years
before the fraud was discovered. Companies are slowly waking up to this menace. Last year, Wipro
asked 25 employees to quit after their credentials were found to be dubious.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), another software behemoth, fired 16
employees for the same reason. "These candidates were given the opportunity to explain
ambiguity in facts," says Ajoy Mukherjee, the head of human resources at
TCS. "And reverification happened through another agency." Stringent background checks are necessary, he says, to ensure
the IT industry maintains its high standards. Now, he says, his company
initiates background checks as soon as a candidate is given the offer letter.
The service costs between $35 and $150 at a top verification company. Yet many CV cheats continue to reap benefits of their fraud.
Since 2004, Nitin, a software engineer who declined to use his last name, has
worked at a software multinational that hired him based on his falsified
résumé. The company pays him a higher salary than the one he claimed to have
earned at his previous job – which was double the
actual amount. Though he had less than one year of experience before starting
the job, Nitin's résumé said he had three. In reality, though, he had spent
those three years looking for work. "In this competitive industry, to get a job, you need
experience, and to get experience you need a job. So what else could I
do?" he asks. According to NASSCOM, the long-term solution to stop CV cheats
like Nitin is the National Skills Registry, which it set up about two years
ago. With more than 300,000 professionals listed, the registry is like a bank
of IT professionals whose backgrounds have been thoroughly verified by a
professional agency. Top companies like Wipro, Satyam, and TCS also see the
registry as a boon. Not all IT professionals feel the impetus to register, as
enrolling names is not mandatory yet. "In the long run, however," says Ameet Nivsarkar, vice
president for global trade and development at NASSCOM, "as more and more
companies hire from the pool of registered people, we foresee candidates that
don't register losing out on jobs. |
