ross18
Rohan Sanghavi
Fake CVs Roil the Indian Job Market
In March 2006, some leading IT services companies in India such as Wipro Technologies (Wipro) and IBM India dismissed several employees, when they discovered that the information provided in the employees’ Curriculum Vitaes (CVs) was false.
The companies also blamed some of the recruitment agencies which had recruited the dismissed employees, for helping them fake their CV’s.
Police complaints were lodged against some of these recruitment agencies, and they were even asked to refund the expenditure incurred by the companies in hiring the dismissed employees.
These charges and allegations highlighted the growing problem of fake CVs in the Indian job market. The phenomenon of fake CVs was not just restricted to the software industry. It was also prevalent in other sectors like ITeS, financial services, retail etc.
It was estimated that Rs 400 crores was spent by Indian companies for filling 200,000 jobs a year in these sectors and 10-12% of the selected candidates had submitted false information in their CVs.
However, the extent of falsification was believed to be much higher in the IT and ITeS sectors as they accounted for 50% of the 200,000 jobs and were highly attractive to job seekers due to their high salary packages and other benefits.
The main areas for falsification were work experience, expertise and skills, educational qualifications, and previous salary packages. It was reported that in many cases the falsification of the CV’s was done with active collaboration of recruitment agencies and at times even with the knowledge and connivance of the company’s recruitment managers.
The boom in the Indian job market had resulted in the growth of the recruitment industry and it was reported that 1,500 new recruitment agencies were set up since 2004 to cater to the growing demand.
As a consequence of the rapid growth of the industry, the credentials and capabilities of these agencies varied widely.
The issue of fake CVs highlighted concerns regarding the professional practices and ethics of the recruitment agencies.
Industries which used the services of these agencies were concerned about the negative perceptions the issue might create with customers based in foreign countries.
They felt that this problem, if unchecked, could negate India’s status as a favorable destination for outsourcing of software and BPO services. The Executive Recruiters Association (ERA), the association of the Indian recruitment industry, expressed its regrets on this issue and promised strict action against the erring member agencies.
ERA said that it had well defined code of ethics and principles to guide its member agencies and their recruitment consultants. ERA also asked company recruiters to avail the services of reputed recruitment agencies instead of lesser known agencies as the monitoring of their work quality would be difficult.
However, the whole issue created serious problems for the HR managers in the affected companies. On the one hand, they had to quickly recruit large numbers of qualified and competent people to meet the demands of growth. On the other hand, they faced the prospect of higher costs and longer lead times for recruitment, if they were to resort to background checks and verification of CVs for all their new recruits.
Source :- icmr.icfai.org