Malad-based service does background checks on prospective employees
Mid Day Metro Malad - July 14 - 20, 2004

Education and employment records of candidates are verified by Quest Screening Services

The concept of screening the credentials of jobseekers, before they are hired, has started establishing its roots in India. Quest Screening Services (QSS) in Malad does just that. It checks some of the tall claims made by the jobseekers.

QSS at Eureka Towers, which has its head office in Hong Kong, started their branch in Mumbai in 2001. And since then the number of companies desirous of making use of its services has been on the rise.

"We started with just one client in Mumbai in 2001 and now the number has grown to more than 100," says Yogesh Bhura, MD of QSS.

"We verify the professional qualifications of the applicant. The client company hires the person only when we give them our nod," he adds.

"The need for such a service is to check the basic honesty and integrity of job seekers and organizations are gradually realizing the importance of such a service in enabling them to hire the right person. If a candidate is not true to the company about his credentials, how can the organization trust him with any job responsibility?" asks Bhura.

"The cost of hiring such a service costs anything between Rs 2000 to Rs 30,000 per candidate. We charge more for a detailed verification," says Bhura.

Bhura explains, "We have to adhere to strict deadlines given by the client companies. Normally, we require 10-15 days for the verifications. But there are times when we have short-term notices like that of a day as the company needs to hire people immediately."

"The education and employment records of candidates is what most of the companies want verified," Bhura says, adding, "While banks ask for an employment check for the last five to seven years, an IT company asks for a check of only three years of employment."

"Besides there are also cases of people giving degrees from universities which do not exists," says Bhura.

Elaborating on their modus operandi, Bhura says that they have to maintain a good rapport with almost all the companies, colleges, schools that exist in Asia and the world as Quest requires information from them. "We have a database of authentic and fraudulent organizations, which is constantly updated, for easy reference," he adds.

QSS also has offices in Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. In India there are a total of 260 staffers, out of which 170 are stationed in Mumbai alone.

Some ways in which jobseekers tried to deceive companies

Case 1 : A candidate seeking a job in a financial organization gave the name of his wife's company, and claimed that he had worked for it. He had given the telephone number of his wife's office so that he could sail through the process of verification. When the human resource department of the organization was contacted during the screening process, this fact came to light.

Case 2 : A candidate tampered with all his documents of the three companies he had worked with. He had worked as a sales executive in one of the companies but changed it to the post of assistant manager.

He had also tampered with his salary records and showed it to be much higher that what he was being paid. Again a cross examination with the HR team of the three companies proved that he had altered the documents.