The increasing focus on verification by business houses can be gauged by the growth of background screening companies.
The space includes Poway (California)-based First Advantage, which has an Indian unit, Mumbai-based Screen Facts Services Pvt. Ltd, Gurgaon-based AuthBridge Research Services Pvt. Ltd, Noida-based Onicra Credit Rating Agency of India Ltd, and Bangalore-based Global Screening Services. According to First Advantage, there are more than 200 background screening companies in the country.
First Advantage, which started operations in India in 2001, grew to 300 employees by the end of 2005. Now it has a staff of 1,000. It had only one client in 2001; today it has more than 1,000 companies seeking its services. In March, First Advantage acquired Kuala Lumpur-based TP Verify Screening Services Pvt. Ltd along with its 125 employees in India and about 250 people across locations in the Asia-Pacific.
Similarly, AuthBridge has grown from three employees in August 2005 to 200 now. The number of clients has increased from just two in 2005 to 150-plus. In the last year, AuthBridge added three sales offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Still, most companies make do with limited enquiries, restricting the process to reference or address checks. “The reasons preventing companies from undertaking proper verification range from lack of awareness, nature of the industry they operate in (the prevalence rate of fake résumés is higher in fast-expanding general industry sectors), time constraints, resources and costs involved,” says Dehade.
The cost of employee checks can range from Rs350 to Rs7,000 for junior- to mid-level recruits. For senior-level recruits, it ranges from Rs12,000 to Rs15,000, depending on the level of due diligence a company requires.
“There are also no defined and streamlined processes to conduct checks at institutes, police stations,” says KPMG’s Mahajan
The seriousness with which the issue is tackled varies from company to company. “While some organizations treat a difference of even three days in the past employment tenure as a serious discrepancy, there are organizations which let pass even a difference as high as 30 days as an area of minor concern,” says Ajay Trehan, chief executive officer, AuthBridge.
“Companies in India don’t lodge complaints of white-collar fraud with the police. In that sense, we are letting the same people (fraudsters) circulate in the system,” says Ramkumar of ICICI Bank. “So, unless an organization is very vigilant, it is difficult to curb this menace.”
The industry body for technology companies,National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), is the only organization which has a centralized database of employees working in the IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) sectors. The data contains third-party verified information pertaining to the education, career track record and personal details of professionals in the IT/BPO sector.