The devil is in the resume

In the mid ‘90s, a student pursuing his Ph.D in Chemistry, in a university located upstate New York, revealed to an eWorld colleague that he had been able to obtain only one genuine recommendation letter from a professor in his engineering college back in India. The US institution needed two. So, how did he manage his admission into the prestigious course in the US? “I wrote my own recommendation; I sneaked into another professor's room in his absence and used his rubber stamp. Who would even know what his genuine signature is?” Refusing to feel guilty, all he said in his defence was, “The second professor was away at the time and my application deadline was nearing. Had he been available, he would have given me an identical reference!”

What was probably a stray case back then seems rampant now, with the industry bearing the brunt of this scourge. The Information Technology (IT) industry, which employs over 2.25 million people, has been particularly hit by false information in resumes, given the nature of mass recruitment here. Consider this: Between 10 and 12 per cent of resumes available in the market have some sort of misrepresentation, subtle or blatant, which has an impact on the overall quality of hires in the Industry, says Priti Rajora, General Manager - Talent Acquisition, Wipro Technologies Ltd. It could be as high as 40 per cent in high-end requirements such as Database Administrator, says another industry official. Considering the huge volume of resumes received by IT companies, the issue becomes even more complex.

The industry, being skill- and experience-driven, looks for candidates with good academic background in addition to superior work exposure. However, fake resumes deny real talent a fair opportunity.

With the increasing demand in the talent supply market, there is an accompanying systematic rise in aspirants indulging in organised malpractices, inflated numbers for years of experience, salary and designation, says Priti Rajora.

First Advantage, a global risk mitigation and business solutions provider, in its recent Background Screening Trends — India Report , says the discrepancy is more at junior associate-level with employees making up 63 per cent of reports with discrepancies; middle management comes second at 19 per cent, with senior management at 3 per cent. This trend is across industries, including IT.

Faking education-related documents, salary slips from previous job and even certificates of appreciation is not uncommon. Since background screening is still at nascent stages in India, a lot of people manage to get away with it.

Right candidate

The pace and scale of growth of IT has been ‘scorching,' leading to an imbalance between the demand for, and the supply of, talent, says Narayanan Nair, Global Head, Staffing, MphasiS. While dealing with clients such as Fortune 500 financial services providers it is critical to invest additional time, effort and cost to hand-pick candidates with the requisite domain skills and integrity.

The IT business is people-dependant and companies need to invest heavily in human capital to recruit the right talent, develop it with the right skills and keep it engaged for a long and successful tenure. “We believe that the right talent will be our key differentiator,” he says, adding that the company gets nearly 15,000 resumes every month.

Vanilla vs high-end

The number of fake resumes is as high as 35-40 per cent (for every 100 applications) for niche technologies or high-paying jobs such as DBAs while it is 20-25 per cent in plain vanilla skills, says Praveen Parameswaran, India Head, Sourcing, UST Global. The company gets 2,000-3,000 resumes per month in lean times and 4,000-4,500 per month in peak times of hiring.

Recruiters are encouraged to ask specific questions upfront to get a fair idea of the validity of the resumes that reach them. Earlier, technical interviews used to be done through telephonic calls. Of late, the US-based company with development centres in India, is using webcams to validate candidates who appear for those interviews and further discussions, if any, he says.

“We are soon getting to a stage where there will be serious questions on the quality and credibility of candidates that are available in the market. Organisations in the service business will be severely impacted since it cripples their ability to ramp up at short notice. The contract employment sector is not very mature in the Indian market unlike in the US or other parts of the world. Both these combined can have a telling impact on the service capability of fast-growing companies,” says Parameswaran.

Blacklisting

Cognizant Technology Solutions says it curbs the incidence of fake resumes at the interview stage itself by analysing all negative feedback received as part of the background checks of candidates and blacklisting the companies mentioned by these candidates in their resumes. Such efforts can only reduce the incidence but background checks initiated upon the acceptance of offer ensure that candidates with fake credentials do not become a part of the organisation, says Satish Jeyaraman, Assistant Vice-President, Human Resources, Cognizant. As the IT industry spawns ever more attractive job opportunities, verifying the credentials of prospective employees has become an imperative for inducting the right talent into the organisation, he says.

Checks and cross references

The talent acquisition function seeks specific references and carries out thorough background checks for the aspirants before they are made an offer. This involves processes ranging from cross-checking with the HR function at former employer organisations to digging out pertinent information from respective colleges. Cognizant also has strict punitive measures against fudging credentials. This discourages the tendency to provide fake credentials.

Cognizant initiates a reference check well before an employee joins the company. In most cases, this process is completed prior to the employee joining the company. However, if the process takes longer, it completes the check within days of an employee coming on board. If the reference check is negative for such employees, Cognizant asks them to leave with immediate effect and withdraws their access to office facilities. The company keeps its customers informed about any such occurrences. This eliminates the possibility of an employee with a questionable background serving a long stint at Cognizant, says Jeyaraman.

Referral, still the best

TAKE Solutions feels it is on safer ground when it taps talent through its recruitment partners and employee referrals. It is rather wary of direct submissions and solicitation through email groups. The tendency to fudge is seen more in the ‘three-five years of experience' range, says Sucheta Shetty, Vice President, HR, TAKE Solutions.

Social networking sites

Govind Singhal, COO and Head, Global Delivery and Operations, Polaris Software Lab Ltd, says that with the advent of social networking, it is easier to connect with past employers and colleagues of an individual to verify details related to his/her past employment. Also, with background checks for every individual being made mandatory, it leaves very little room for fiction in a resume, says Singhal. However, Polaris does not concern itself with the private life of an individual. Even though the company's career vacancies are heavily circulated on Facebook and Twitter, it restricts itself only to professional networking sites while researching the background of an individual, he says.

Since recruitment is a volume game of late, recruiters might not have the bandwidth to validate every candidate through their social presence but that is certainly done for senior hires as well as suspicious candidates.

UST Global relies on tools such as ‘Reppify' that profile a candidate based on their social presence to validate claims made in the resume, says Parameswaran.

Priti Rajora of Wipro says the company does not rely on social networking sites to verify a candidate's credentials, essentially because the information displayed on social networking sites cannot be taken at face value.

“Yes, we do check these sites for a certain limited number of cases, only if we are looking for some specific information that is likely to be found in the social networking profiles.”

> raja@thehindu.co.in

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