by Jason Morris

India, one of the largest pools of IT professionals in the world is seeing an increased need for background checks.  One of the reasons we launched employeescreen University was to educate employers across the globe on the virtues of doing proper employee background investigations.  One bad hire can cost your company millions in lost revenue and a lot of embarrassment.  Global background checks or “international background screening” is a growing trend. (Read employeescreenIQ 2009 Trends).

This story is a perfect example of why organizations need to tighten up their hiring practices.

IT Firms Have No Place for a Fake Resume

The IT-BPO industry is becoming increasingly clear that a fake resume can cost you your job with India’s largest IT serivces provider, Tata Consultancy Service (TCS), being the latest to recently ask close to 20 employees at its Kolkata centre to leave. The company, during the background verification, found that these employees have used fudged resumes to get jobs.

In the recent past all the major IT firms including Infosys, Satyam and Wipro Technologies and many mid-cap firms have taken a hard stand on fake or fudged resumes. However, the incidents continue. First Advantage, a leading background screening firm, in its recent report states that 30 per cent of all the resumes they have screened have discrepancies. In 2006-07 the company screened over 2 million applicants across industries. Ashish Dehade, managing director (West Asia), First Advantage says, “The percentage has been increasing. In 2006 it was 16-17 per cent, for 2007 its was 30 per cent and while we are just six months into 2008 the percentage is around 30 per cent.”

TCS is not the only firm doing this. Earlier Infosys had asked close to 100 employees to leave in FY07 due to discrepancies found in the resumes. Same goes for Satyam and Wipro Technologies. Some time back it was reported that Wipro would be sharing with other IT firms the database of job applicants who have faked information in their CVs.

More

by Jason Morris

This idea would never ‘cut it’ in the U.S., too many EEOC and other Federal and State implications.  However, our friends in India seem to be having some success with it. Could you imagine a daily updated database of citizens who have already had a background check?  This initiative begs a lot of questions.  I am interested to see the debate ensue!

National Skills Registry a ‘great first step’

Bangalore, June 16 Two years after its launch, the National Skills Registry, a Nasscom initiative boasts of a database of over 2.5 lakh ‘clean people’ in the industry.

But with over two million employees in the current IT/ITeS workforce in the country, can the registry really enhance the country’s reputation as a ‘trusted outsourcing’ destination?

“Though there are moves to make it popular, it has to reach a critical mass to actually catch on with the industry,” says Mr Gautam Sinha, Chief Executive Officer, TVA Infotech, an IT recruitment firm.

The tipping point will be when large IT firms make it mandatory for all job aspirants to be registered on the registry, he says.

Mr Mohandas Pai, Director, HR, Infosys, says that though the company has mandated a background check for all its lateral recruits, “we cannot reject a candidate if he or she is not registered with the NSR”.

More