BANGALORE: David Edmundson, CEO of US consumer electronics retail giant RadioShack was forced to resign last month. The reason: His resume lied about his educational background.
Faking resumes is not uncommon in the Indian IT industry also. However, when some unscrupulous independent Human Resources outfits act in collusion with jobseekers to improve the latter's chances of getting a job, and subsequently, landing a decent commission from the company that is hiring, the issue is far more serious.
A newspaper report today said that Wipro had filed police complaints against a few such HR outfits, besides showing the door to employees who had fudged their resumes.
“This is a great move on the part of Wipro. Such actions need to get publicized so that this menace is stopped,” said Gautam Sinha, CEO of TVA Infotech, a leading IT recruitment firm in Bangalore.
He said that companies are demanding reference checks on most prospective employees. “In the past, they would do these checks on senior people with 10-12 years experience. Now it is done for all candidates,” he added.
Fudging or “padding”(as the popular euphemism for embellishing resumes goes) a resume could involve false details of education, extent of work experience and also job roles and projects.
When contacted, an IBM spokesperson said, “IBM holds the highest level of corporate governance and ethical practices. We have a clear set of guidelines that define our business conduct. As a process, employment documentation provided by the employees is verified. If discrepancies are found in the documentation submitted, necessary action is taken.”
Many companies also seek the help of private detectives to conduct screening of human resources.
Colonel Narayan, branch manager of Globe Detective Agency here, which regularly conducts referral and pre-employment checks for IT companies in Bangalore, said, “In 10-15% of the cases, there is some aspect or the other that is fake. Sometimes the qualifications, names of the companies where the employee claims to have worked before does not exist, the addresses given may not match, or the phone numbers of the references mentioned may be wrong.”
Dell and HP check with neighbors the personal background and behavior of its prospective call center employees.
NASSCOM should take lead Sinha feels that the recent action taken by Wipro is a wake up call for the industry to fight this jointly. “NASSCOM should take the lead in creating a database of such fraudsters. If banks can maintain a list of people who have committed credit card fraud, why can't the IT industry?”
Hema Ravichandar, former HR head of Infosys, who is now a professional strategic HR Advisory, feels that immediate and strong action against employees who are found to have faked their CVs would send a strong message across the industry.
She also recommended blacklisting agencies that forward or trade in such fake resumes.
“It is also important to be proactive in this regard. This can happen by encouraging employees to participate in Registry initiatives and also seek such identification number from prospective candidates when they apply to an organization,” said Ravichandar.
She suggests the sharing the names of errant HR agencies across companies in the industry.
According to E Abraham Mathew, CEO of CyberMedia Dice, a technology-focused job board, instances of fake resumes is not a new issue.
“It has been prevalent since 2000 when the IT and dotcom boom started. The incidence of such instances since then is roughly the same. They haven't increased.”
He also said that the NASSCOM should work with law enforcement agencies in an initiative akin to the National Skills Registry for IT Professionals (NSR-IT).
Mathew also opined that besides policing, the industry needed to take a collective stand to conduct assessment tests for all prospective employees.
“Many major IT companies are very hesitant to ask candidates with more than two years work experience to do an assessment test because they fear that candidates would back out since they have a lot of offers in hand.”
With the headcounts of both MNCs and domestic IT companies steadily growing northwards, Human Resources departments of companies have a tougher role of not just hiring the required numbers but also the right ones.
All the more reason to devise a proper system to sift the chaff from the grain.
© CyberMedia News
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