Background verification companies on the prowl

HYDERABAD: Are you on a job hunt? If you thought that you can quote a fake project or can create a false resume, chances are that you would be caught red-handed sooner than you thought.

With the number of candidates giving wrong information in their applications rising, recruiters are now employing the services of specialised companies for background verification of the applicants. More than two dozen such companies are operating in Hyderabad.

“We have found that almost four out of 10 applicants give some or other form of inaccuracies in their resumes,” V. Sridhar, associate vice-president, operations, at a background verification company, Crederity, said.

When a professional changes his job, he usually tries to negotiate better terms and salary from his new employer. For this reason most people try to exaggerate their salary, duration of their work, responsibility they held and sometimes even their education. “To check these practices most major companies, including MNCs, are now banking up on our services to verify the authenticity of these claims,” he explained.

Background verification takes 15 to 20 days to finish and can cover a range of issues from employment verification, reference checks to even claims of overseas work experience, he said.

Challenging task

But how can a firm verify the claims of a person with a diverse experience? Mr. Sridhar says that it’s a challenge even for the firm. “While it is easy to check employment details of a person, dealing with government agencies like universities and police is a time consuming process,” he said.

Recruiters too claim that employing specialised firms to get a through verification of a candidate has become a necessity these days.

“To get better positions candidates are now using sophisticated methods to hoodwink the companies. Gone are the days when a candidate would just create a false certificate or a project report. There were few instances where some candidates even created fake bank statements and employment certificates, which can amount to criminal conspiracy,” a senior human resource (HR) manager working in an MNC observed.

With candidates using better tactics employing professional verification companies is a better option, he added.

This article was published in The Hindu on June 20, 2012

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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