Indian job seekers are getting crafty to get ahead.
In the last financial year, 15 of every 100 resumes have shown a mismatch in the information they carry about the candidate and that thrown up during a background check by the company, according to the annual trends report on background screening by AuthBridge. Overall, the Gurugram-based background verification firm found that discrepancy levels have risen significantly since last year when 10.29% of the applications provided incorrect information.
The background checks unearthed discrepancies on various fronts like employment, address, education, and reference checks. Most often, the employment verification did not line up – either the referee did not respond, the employee stated an incorrect tenure, or he or she did not provide correct documentation, besides other things.
During residence checks, the house was often found locked, the candidate was not residing at the given address, the location was untraceable, or the candidate provided an incomplete or incorrect address.
Most discrepancies were reported in Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh, but Gujarat had the highest incidence of employment misinformation. Punjab, meanwhile, reported the most number of discrepancies in addresses, while candidates in Bihar posted the highest number of educational mismatches. Overall, men (15.71%) were more likely to trick prospective employers than women (13.09%), the report found.
The financial services sector, in particular, is hard hit, with 23.99% of all CVs being manipulated. The telecom sector was a close second at 23.44%.
To ensure that applicants aren’t defrauding companies, AuthBridge recommends running multiple background checks across all categories. Unfortunately, not every company has the bandwidth to do that. Human resources departments are often understaffed and overworked, and technology tools that can lessen the burden on managers are cropping up only now. So, much of the misinformation slips under the radar. “It has been found that 90% of the employers in the organised sector, with the exception of IT, banking, and financial services, conduct background checks of minimal order,” AuthBridge noted.
“In addition, the ease of availability of fake documents and certificates pose a huge threat to the authenticity of the entire process,” the report stated. Close to 7,500 companies in India, the firm noted, provide fake documents and employment certificates.
This article first appeared on Quartz.
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