Beware of lying on your resume
Indian Companies are increasingly hiring professionals to run pre-employment checks on job applicants.
By Jayalakshmi Venugopal ( Bangalore)
Excerpts from Daily News and Analysis December 2005

India Inc is now getting smart towards ‘resume’ frauds: job applicants who send in resumes with false information. Companies are increasingly hiring professionals to run background checks on job applicants.

Background checks are not entirely new to Indian Companies. “But these were earlier viewed more as a formality but not as a stringent necessity,” says B.S.Murthy, Bangalore-based HR consultant. The Process has now become tougher & organized following the entry of foreign competitors. Background checking now covers education, previous employment records, criminal verification, sexual harassment history, corruption and credits defaults..

As companies scale up, the screening has expanded to more sectors. IT and ITES sectors were among the first to adopt background screening. Now hospitality, healthcare, transport, education and FMCG sectors have followed suit.

“In 2000 US financial services companies were our main customers. Now Indian BPOs, insurance and; oil and gas sectors also use our services,” says Yogesh Bhura, the managing director of First Advantage – Asia, a leading employee screening firm in Mumbai.

Earlier this year, a leading Indian IT firm made a startling revelation: a background check revealed that one per cent of the company’s workforce had submitted false documents at the time of interview.

Awareness for screening is growing, as risks involved are huge. Recruiters look out for ‘red flags’ or false claims in resumes across all levels. This is done now more than before because decision-making responsibilities that affect a company’s future is delegated to people down the chain,” says Gautam Ghosh, Hyderabad-based HR Consultant.

Resume fraud is seen across all levels in India; most people lie about educational qualifications. According to a BBC Risk Advisory Group 2004 study, a quarter of CVs they received had a lie. Most common lies pertain to previous employment, achievements and education. Costs of screening per employee ranges from Rs175-6,000 depending on the type of check undertaken. In India the primary focus is on education and work experience, while in the West it is criminal records and personality screening.

Blogs and recruitment
In the west checks are conducted on personal blogs. Indian bloggers don’t need to worry because the trend is yet to catch on here.

Blogs are seen globally as a good recruitment tool. On December 5, a German Masters student from the Technology University of Munich started a blog titled, Hire Me Google, to get the attention of recruiter’s at the search engine giant.

Microsoft’s staffing programs manager Heather Hamilton says in her blog: “I think blogging is going to change the way companies recruit (with people at the company blogging and recruiter’s seeking out bloggers). The Internet will be the new job posting and resume data base”.