In The News
The Times of India July 06, 2005

You’ve applied for a job. The interviews went beautifully and they are practically begging you to join the firm.
Your interviewers think they know everything there is to know about you and the elementary details on you resume are all verified. However, you have something unsavoury in your past that you did not tell them about. You figure that what they don’t know can’t hurt them … right?

WRONG
Owing to the recent security breaches in two Indian call centres, organizations around the country are waking up to the importance of probing their prospective employees backgrounds just to make sure they get the right kind of people on board. Studies have shown that 30-40 percent of all employees exaggerate facts to varying degrees on their resumes. Though this is “perfectly normal”, there are also those job-seekers who completely veil their past from the employer’s view, and thus conceal important facts that the employer should be aware of. This could include a criminal record, allegations of impropriety or negligence at previous jobs, submission of fake educational or credit records, etc. Sadly, most of these defaulters are never found out. And that is not all.

Identity theft is on the rise and assuming alarming proportions in today’s information driven era. This lends even more credence to the need for verifying certain relevant facts about your future employees who, if not handpicked carefully, might render you and your company vulnerable to attack. For years, US employers have assiduously pursued a policy of screening their employees for details that might prove critical to the way they discharge their duties. Following the recent terror attacks, the worker screening procedure in American firms has been further intensified and fine-tuned. However, their counterparts in India haven’t been quite so scrupulous about double-checking prospective workers. Virender Sen, Head of Projects and Planning at 3G says, “The amount of risk that a corporation is exposed to because of an individual is huge, and so it makes sense to make background checking a mandatory practice.”

Employee screening is vital in fields like Information Technology, Banking, and in Business Process Outsourcing, which have high attrition rates and where sensitive data passes through the fingers of employees every day. Unfortunately, many organizations have a ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ policy towards recruitment.

Screening is seen as an unnecessary and ostentatious exercise. Most Indian organizations also bemoan the lack of a central database of information and quote a lack of time and/or staff as the main reason for not conducting background checks. Executive screening agencies might be the solution to their problems. They are relatively inexpensive, especially when processing a large number of job applications and also when compared to the costs associated with replacing renegade employees.

After an organization receives a full report on the employee’s whereabouts and history, it is up to them to interpret the report and make their decision. Some employers might find it tempting to commission background screening, and hire the employees while waiting for the results – never a wise thing to do. There is only one way to get the process right – with tons of patience.

However, there are those sceptics who question the effectiveness of background searching. Their contention is that most data-theft crimes ( or other anomalies) happen on the spur of the moment, where a fleeting second of greed makes a thief out of a conscientious employee. True, there is no failsafe to prevent such a situation from happening. But one thing is for sure: careful screening will drastically cut down the possibility of such incidents happening. Organizations that make it known that they screen their employees will not have to deal with people with questionable backgrounds, since they stay away, fully knowing that their little secret could easily become public.

NASSCOM has been recently taking steps towards establishing a detailed voluntary employee information bank. Says NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik, “We are working on a database of trained and certified personnel and trainers for the ITES/IT industry under a common national body to be shared with industry players, as there is a realization that the BPO sector is processing more and more sensitive information and there is a need to establish an audit trail and pin down the liability if required.” Yogesh Bhura, GM – Indian Operations at Quest Research, a leading executive screening agency, agrees to the need for a national database, because, he says, “It is difficult to obtain data in the Indian context.” So how do third-party screening agencies like Quest manage? “We usually go to the source – previous employers stated by the interviewee, for example – to get our information,” he clarifies. Sensitive information in the wrong hands can be an expensive mistake for corporates.

A thorough background check can save time, resources and face, finds out Nikhil Menon.

Why applicant screening makes sense :-

1. Employees privy to confidential information must be completely trustworthy.
2. On-the-job training is costly and time-consuming. You have to be sure that your new recruits will be around until the end.
3. A negligent employee is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Your firm could be persecuted by law for an irresponsible recruitment procedure.
4. It enhances security among the workforce and minimizes employee theft.
5. Not only that, something impressive about an employee’s past – a hidden skill that is unearthed, for example - could be used to your advantage and his!