Better safe than sorry
Excerpts from Manorama Online - June 15, 2004

Valencio more than met the requirements for the job of vice president (marketing) of a multinational IT company in Hyderabad. His resume boasted many years of experience with some of the best companies and an excellent track record. His overwhelming presentation and communication skills, and the company's urgency to get him on board, landed him the coveted position.

Ten days into the job, Valencio disappeared. And with him confidential information of the company. The company soon realised that every information he provided was fake-his name, address and contact numbers. It was concluded that Valencio was a corporate spy from a rival company. In another case, Brinda Anthony submitted a forged degree certificate to one of the top five BPOs in India. A background check with Mumbai University revealed that the certificate was forged. When this was communicated to Brinda, she submitted another document: this time a verification letter on the university's letterhead authenticating that she was a graduate. Later, it was found that even this was forged. When Brinda was asked to be present at the University along with the company representative she did not turn up.

With IT-enabled services and business process outsourcing (BPO) generating an employment boom, companies are discovering a staggering vulnerability to malpractices by applicants. This, in turn, has led to the growth of an ancillary industry that conducts background checks on prospective employees, verifying their identity, education, pre-employment status and even past criminal records. Industry sources say that a major demand for pre-employment screening comes from industries like banking, insurance and financial services.

"The cost of a bad hire far exceeds the amount of money you pay to conduct a background check. Most companies apply this business logic," said Yogesh Bhura, managing director (group research services) of Quest Screening Services. Quest conducts around 10,000 background checks every month for its clients.

The size of the market in Asia is $6 million and projections show it will grow to $10-15 million in the next two years, said Yogesh Bhura, managing director of Quest Screening Services.

" On an average, depending upon each company's recruitment practices, we find a 10-20 per cent discrepancy in the claims made by applicants and our findings. The disparity could range from overstating qualifications, salary and designation to presenting fake certificates and giving false references," said Bhura. "In some cases, one even finds a complete fudging of the CV and the names of universities and companies that do not exist."

The screening industry in India is at a nascent stage, but with 100 per cent growth estimates in the next couple of years, a background check could well be the norm rather than the exception. "The size of the market in Asia is $6 million and projections show that it will easily grow to $10-15 million in the next two years," said Bhura. "However, compared to the US market of $6 billion, we are far behind. In the US, companies can be sued for negligent hiring."

More and more companies are now recognising the high dividends of going through a stringent screening procedure. "We deal with international customers and data security issues are of utmost importance to us. We take no chances and outsource pre-employment screening for everyone at all levels," said Milind Jadhav, vice-president (Human Resources) of Patni Computer Systems. "It has paid off. Many cases where serious attempts to hide information and people misrepresenting their employment or academic history have come to light."

The level of screening a few years ago was limited to 'report-writing' and internal HR policies were not comprehensive enough for a sound background check. Even today, many companies limit screening to a phone call. As Sastri of Covansys India pointed out, "At the outset, we believed that reference checks were just a phone call away. Also, the time, effort and overhead costs involved in creating a separate team for background checks seemed unaffordable. But once we conducted the screening, it was an eye-opener. The levels of falsifications by job applicants in the industry are alarming."

"Overstating your achievements is natural while applying for a job, especially in a competitive market," said Unmesh Pawar, recruitment head for the India Delivery Centre of Accenture. "Pre-employment screening helps one play safe."

Soma Jeevan, HR head of the Chennai-based Electronic Data Systems Corporation, looks at screening as an elimination procedure. "We conduct preemployment screening only while recruiting for our BPO centres since we hire in large numbers. For the rest of our employees, we have a reference check that includes a medical examination as well. It is better to be safe than sorry," he said.

But the industry is yet to integrate the screening processes. "We face a number of problems while conducting a background check. For a criminal record check, we can only do a limited screening as none of the records is stored electronically," said Bhura. "These bottlenecks will gradually disappear. I would give it another ten years for a system to be put into place whereby a third party will have a database of records that can be checked in electronic formats. This would make it possible to verify background online in a few minutes." Elementary, my dear jobseeker.