Employers to use screening services to check fake CVs
Outlook Money, November 28, 2007

Candidates fudging CVs to get jobs beware! Employers can catch you using services of Background Screening Industry which has the wherewithal to check a potential employee's background.

The new industry, which is less than seven years old, is gaining popularity globally as more and more companies are realizing that a "bad hire" has the propensity to inflict immense damage to the image and reputation of the company.

“We help the companies to recruit right set of people in their organization as the character and competence of an employee is of paramount importance. In today's world, the last thing that a company would want is negative reputation,” First Advantage Private Ltd Managing Director Ashish Dehade told PTI.

The company offers background checks on employees with customized services.

But unlike private detective agencies which carry out undercover operations, the background screening industry operates in a transparent manner with the consent of the prospective employee who knows that company where he has applied is verifying his credentials through an outsourced background screening agency.

It is the growing incidences of fraud, negligence, data theft, danger to employees and loss of reputation of the companies because of nefarious activities of employees of questionable character and integrity which has created a demand for creditable organizations that can verify the credentials of a candidate like a private detective agency.

The seeds of the Background Screening industries in India were sown after multinational companies started seeing India as a major hub for outsourcing. When information technology and IT-enabled services started their operations in India in a big way, they started insisting on background verification of the prospective employees. This was to prevent data theft and fraud.

Then pharmaceutical industries also started insisting on background screening and now several other industries including aviation, oil and gas are doing background check of their employees, Dehade added.

The background screening involves checking the veracity of educational qualifications mentioned in the CV, work experience employment history, designation in the job, information provided by personal and professional references and several other claims made in the CV. Besides, it also involves police verification of character of the individual.

The brutal sexual assault and murder of a girl working with a BPO in Pune two weeks back by a driver employed by the company further highlights how important background screening is before a person is hired.

The growing incidents of threat to women employees working in the BPOs could be considerably minimized if the travel agencies ensure that background screening of their drivers is done before they are employed.

Appointing a candidate without verifying the claims in his CV have cost many companies dearly. For instance, a Bangalore-based employee of one of the world's leading bank was arrested some time back for his involvement in stealing confidential data of a UK-based customer by hacking into computers, Dehade said. The employee had joined the bank by producing forged qualification certificates.

In another instance of “bad hire,” the anti-terrorism squad during investigations into the 7/11 serial blasts in Mumbai, which took more than 180 lives in 2006, uncovered that two of the blast suspects used degree certificates from an unrecognized institute to get jobs in well known companies.

One was hired as a programmer with a multinational software company in Bangalore while the other was a computer engineer with a Pune-based IT Major, Dehade said, adding that had the companies checked the claims in their CVs, the companies could have saved themselves from severe loss of reputation.