The Hindu Business Line : Fake CVs: A wake-up call

Faking in CVs is not a new game, but Wipro's recent firing of close to 100 employees for faking details in resumes is a wake-up call for the entire recruitment industry, say recruiters. And those playing by the rule are nodding their heads in approval.

Mr Jayachandran Pillai, Co-founder and Director, Alp Management Consultants, a Bangalore-based IT recruitment firm, says: "There are recruitment agencies that regularly cut and paste pages of experience from one resume to another. Of course, this is done with the approval of candidates." And faking happens in all pages of the resume: education, experience and salary.

About 20 per cent of any recruitment agency's resume base has some false data. And when companies are hiring close to a 1,000 people a month, there are bound to be some gatecrashers, say recruiters.

"There are people who have faked offer letters and relieving letters," says Mr Kris Lakshmikanth, Managing Director, The HeadHunters India. Over the years, recruiters at The HeadHunters have learnt to detect deception: "When a candidate does not mention exact dates of experience in a project or a company, we know there's something fishy." He says verification checks are becoming mandatory now. "Some companies do it after they take people on board because they are in a hurry to recruit."

He says this does not mean that recruitment agencies can go scot-free. "They are abetting the crime and they have to be blacklisted like the candidates." Mr Gautam Sinha, CEO, TVA Infotech, says, "This is a wake-up call for the industry. We all know that fake resumes have been doing the rounds for sometime now and now's the time for companies together with Nasscom to start a process of blacklisting candidates "

Wipro's firing line

Commenting on the dismissal episode, Mr Achuthan Nair, Head of Recruitment, Wipro Technologies, told Business Line that there were two categories of people that were fired in the recent sacking exercise: "A few employees and a shadow software company (sub-contractor) that was supplying employees to us for short-term projects."

He said this was not an empanelled recruitment agency, but an agency that was leasing out employees to Wipro. "And these were the employees that we had taken on board from the sub-contractor. Unfortunately, we discovered the deceit after we recruited them."

He also said they were talking to Nasscom to launch an initiative and "work together to fight the menace."

"We are at the forefront of the battle and are ready to exchange names with Nasscom to help it develop the skills registry." In fact, Nasscom's skills registry for BPO employees has been launched and is a repository of info on employees' professional and education background.

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