Your newly hired accountant could be a criminal

After hiring Mr X as an executive, a leading BPO company discovered during an employment check that the candidate had served five years in prison. When he got selected, he was on bail. He hadn’t disclosed his imprisonment and, instead, had submitted a fake certificate to suppress the five-year jail term. When she returned from a month-long sick leave to her NCR-based company, her boss felt her demeanour had changed, work turned inconsistent and she suffered frequent ‘memory losses’. A background verification entrusted to a security agency revealed that ‘she’ had actually died two weeks ago and her twin sister had quietly slipped into her role.

Following the exit interview of a female employee, a leading company in the services sector discovered that a senior board member was sexually harassing women in the firm. He was also found to be a defendant in two court cases, something he hadn’t disclosed to the company.

Sounds straight from a Bollywood potboiler? No, these are among problems faced by many a company, forcing them to outsource background screening on existing employees as well as candidates.

“Most of these companies now hire recruitment agencies for staffing solutions. Then they hire us to do the crucial background verification of selected candidates,” Ajay Trehan, founder-CEO, AuthBridge, told BusinessLine .

There is huge demand from India Inc for background verification process, and the sector is growing 60-70 per cent year-on-year.

“On an average, we conduct 70,000 to 80,000 background checks every month,” said Trehan.

Background verification is also increasing being used by online aggregators — for taxi drivers, plumbers, electricians, etc — and domestic help agencies. Background checks on potential drivers for cab aggregators are known to have revealed criminals facing serious charges such as rape and kidnapping.

Cab drivers Across India, background checks for drivers (that began in earnest two years ago) take one to three months to complete. In Delhi, the online checks are completed in two-three weeks. “We found that 2-2.5 per cent of cab drivers have a criminal bent of mind,” said Trehan.

Earlier, only IT and financial firms and MNCs opted for outsourced background verifications during recruitment. “Nowadays, almost all major companies, across sectors, do it. We work directly with the company, not through the recruitment firms,” he added.

The fee, per selected candidate, ranges from ₹3,000 to ₹3 lakh (for say, a CEO).

COMMENT NOW