Ameerpet, Hyderabad becoming a hub for fake experience certificate racket

Java, SAP, Dot Net, Mobile Apps, Testing, Networking these may look like disjointed words, but for aspirants who want a share of the lucrative software industry pie, these are but keys to a dream job. And the popularity of these courses can be gauged even during a casual stroll through the narrow by-lanes of Ameerpet.

Aspirants throng the nondescript pathways displaying the pamphlets urging an aspirant to take up various courses for a brighter future. Whatever may be the educational background, if one can splurge enough money on learning proprietary software, institutes in Ameerpet assure that they can land a well paying job in a software company.

There are more than 500 engineering colleges in the State and only a handful of these manage about 100 per cent placements for their students through campus placements, Siddhartha Malempati of Forum for IT Professionals (ForIT) said. And for these students doing a course in proprietary software is the next available alternative, he said.

Many institutions in the city adopt a standard procedure. They charge a candidate anywhere between Rs. 60,000 to Rs. 1.5 lakh depending on the course. Then they train the person for about six months and arrange an experience certificate for the candidate to enable him in finding a job.

“Lured by these claims, fresh graduates from the smaller towns are flocking the city to do these courses and spend huge amounts of money and precious time,” Mr. Siddhartha said.

But aspirants land in trouble soon after they finish their courses. “In Andhra Pradesh craze for an IT job has put all other engineering streams into a relative disadvantage. When candidates do not get a job through campus placements they try to enter a company through backdoor and produce a fake experience certificates,” a senior HR manager from an IT company said.

“More than 80 per cent of fake experience certificates come from Andhra Pradesh and the largest concentration of training companies, who provide experience letters for dummy projects done during the training, is around Ameerpet,” he observed.

“To make an experience letter look genuine, candidates are indulging in illegal activities of fabricating fake documents like bank statements and salary slips,” he said.

With a rise in the incidence of fake certificates, the software companies have made the background verification of a candidate a mandatory procedure before hiring him, he said.

“Apart from the background verification, most companies screen out the candidates, who they feel, might be producing a fake certificate in the initial stages itself,” he said.

“As a precaution companies started rejecting a candidate carrying an experience certificate from an Ameerpet based company or institution. The only exceptions being those companies whose names are well known in the industry,” the professional explained.

This article was published in The Hindu on April 03, 2012

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