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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

May - 2011 - issue > Management

Background Checks and their Importance

R Subramaniam (Subbu)
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
R Subramaniam (Subbu)
It is not uncommon to hear of a couple of employees getting caught in a BPO company for passing out data to a client’s competitor for a consideration, a couple of bank employees manipulating some of their client’s accounts to transfer funds to their own accounts, or a candidate seeking a job with a fake resume or even a fake degree certificate. Is it not just recently that we heard of a couple of pilots who had produced fake certificates on their flying hours?

In one of the organizations that I worked earlier, we had an employee who was assigned to a particular client’s project. On the insistence of the client all team members assigned to their project had to undergo a background check. This check showed that the employee, who was an excellent performer for over two years in the organization, had a fake post graduation certificate. The person never went to the university nor did he actually do a post graduation. Initially, the employee denied the charge but when he was repeatedly questioned he broke down and accepted his fault.

Technology advances rapidly and new tools get introduced almost every week. Organizations embracing this technology and tools do insist on a certain amount of experience while hiring. Employees upgrade their knowledge quite fast by attending classes or using the internet but find no means of getting work experience on the same. When they see organizations asking for such an experience, the easiest route adopted by many of the youngsters today is to fake their resume by replacing one of the skills on which they have worked for long by the skill the organization is looking for.

I have, during various interviews, observed candidates who have converted a couple of their projects using VB to Oracle because that was what the hiring Organization required. And, if the candidate was smart enough to answer the questions in Oracle, getting through was easy.

Another common area of “faking” resumes is manipulating the duration the person has worked in an organization. Candidates, when appearing for a job interview fear justifying a break in their career. In India organizations are not very open to accepting candidates who exited their earlier job because they were asked to leave, especially candidates at junior levels.


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