India Inc banks on sleuths for recruitments

Terrorist links and sale of personal data by BPOs, among others, is making corporate India very jittery about hiring prospective candidates.

In fact, its not just companies and individuals, but also governments that have been exposed to the risk of shady business alliances and deals, as was noticed in the Andhra Pradesh Volkswagen case.

While some in the past are known to have taken the help of private detective firms for a background check before hiring key individuals, with the rising incidence of falsification at the recruitment stage, most companies are now settling down to a tried and tested route of going to pre-employment screening specialists.

"This is definitely a concern today for the corporate world, as you find people fudging their resumes, giving false references and lying about their education records," says Bimal Rath, head of HR, Nokia.

Confirming the trend is a frightening estimate. According to a study conducted by Hill & Associates India, a leading player in pre-employment screening, nearly 17-20 per cent candidates tend to falsify their claims.

For this, it selected two samples - 760 IT professionals and 862 professionals from diverse fields - and analysed the results. It showed that the dominant area of fraud related to an exaggerated information about job profile (including designation and and project handled) which was higher in the case of IT professionals.

In the financial sector, a majority of falsifications pertain to educational qualifications, certificates obtained and/or previous designations.

The trend of providing convenient references (friends) to elicit a favourable feedback was noticed to be particularly high in the case of chartered accountants and professionals with a degree in Master of Computer Applications (MCA).

In call centres, a majority of the applicants provide exaggerated information about their educational details like percentages obtained and schooling.

Also, interestingly enough candidates from tier-II cities tend to provide incorrect information more often. And it was noticed as part of this study that universities and colleges in the eastern states of India provide the maximum number of forged degrees and certifications.

Validating this trend is another lead player, Yogesh Bhura, MD, First Advantage Quest Research, who says that the incidence of negative candidates works out to as high as 14.5 per cent in a month, and the agency handles on an average 45,000 screens. Now that's a frightening figure that would give anyone second thoughts.

Interestingly enough, recruitment firms are not the ones to be involved in this space. "It leads to a conflict of interests," says Rath.

Vivek Aggarwal, head - business intelligence & integrity risk, Hill & Associates, in all developed markets corporate sleuthing has evolved as a separate segment.

"We are in the process of setting up a separate division to handle pre-employment screening to a separate set of clients that are not our recruitment clients," says Shiv Agrawal, CEO, ABC Consultants, pointing to the growing demand for such services.

While MNCs and IT firms had driven this use of service in India, increasingly most Indian companies are also now resorting to these screens as part of their basic recruitment process.

That's not all, most companies which choose to hire these services use them for mitigating their business and legal risk before considering mergers and alliances as well.