PCG :: Principal Consulting Group :: Employee Verification

On April 2006, the IT-enabled sector in India had their first warning note. Three former workers of Msource – Mphasis BFL’s BPO wing – were arrested in Pune. Their crime was what soon had everyone in the industry and, more importantly their paymasters, taking note. The employees had allegedly stolen over $350,000 from four Citibank customers.

A sting operation mounted by Channel 4 found another employee who was more than willing to sell the credit card details of 200,000 people.
Times News Network reported that two team leaders working in Slash-Support in Chennai had “misused their authority” (a euphemism, one supposes, for fraud) and created 30 dummy customer e-mail IDs and walked away with more than $91,000 (over Rs 41 lakh). The money was meant to pay refunds to unsatisfied customers.

These incidents screamed aloud a glaring omission: the need for rigorous screening of those whom the IT-enabled sector planned to take in. Resume fraud was and is common. Most people lie about their educational qualifications. In fact, according to a BBC Risk Advisory Group 2004 study, a quarter of CVs they received had a lie. The most common pertained to petty mendacity – dishonesty regarding details of previous employment, achievements and education.

The cost of overlooking these is high – as HSBC found out last year. It was duped of 233,000 pounds after data was stolen. The man in the U.K. who received data from the call centre executive and carried out the fraudulent transactions is of Indian origin. He worked for the HSBC Electronic Data Processing India in Bangalore. HSBC’s fault? In contravention of standard industry practices for commercial call centers, it had not conducted a background check before allowing its employee to access customer data.

Earlier this year, IT behemoth Wipro’s chief Azim Premji made a starting revelation: a background check in their organization had revealed that one per cent of Wipro’s workforce had submitted false documents during interview time.

Coming from one of India’s premium IT firms, this statement is an eye-opener and stresses the need for employment background screening. Not only does screening sieve out the undesirable and the downright crooked, it plays a critical role in establishing comfort levels for overseas investors and customers seeking business opportunities in India.

Pre-employment screening is necessary in IT companies as they handle sensitive data. Most employees of IT firms have access to the personal information of clients. Also, most companies value their staff as assets and, hence, invest time and money to ensure that these people are highly productive and also competent. There is no point in all that going down the drain simply because no verification is carried out at the entry level.

For any one getting a part of his business done in India, screening is imperative – for the following reasons:

In India, the primary focus during screening is on education and work experience; in the West, it is on criminal records and personality traits.

There is no standard solution for verification. In developed societies where wired communities and logs are commonplace, where the state keeps individual records stored in central databases and accesses them, verification is an easy task. But, in less developed societies, the task is complex owing to the fact that data is not found at one location leave apart a cyber location. Data in fact has to be verified manually. Even when a centre that hosts data has been found, it is often difficult to verify individual information because of the cumbersome route that has to be taken to get to it.

The verification process is dependent on the agency hired to do it and on the level at which recruitment is taking place. There are certain basic steps. Usually, applications of selected candidates are handed over to the pre-employment screening agency. The agency scrutinizes the applications and assigns a team of investigators – trained people who know the local language – to check out the individual.

Pre-employment verification is tailor-made and depends on a company’s requirement. In most cases, it involves verifying:

At the entry level the focus is on educational qualifications, and at the mid-level it is on projects/technologies and record with the previous employer. At the management level, the focus is on the individual’s record of success, ability to envision and operationalize strategic initiatives and management style.

The cost of screening an employee ranges from Rs175-6,000 ($4-$136), depending on the type of checks required.

There are also: Credit checks; civil & criminal litigation checks; and a review of international prescribed lists. After all these, you can rest assured that your employee poses no risk to your business.

India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) announced Wednesday ,Jan-18-2006, the launch of a National Skills Registry (NSR) for IT and BPO (business process outsourcing) professionals. The registry, which is online at https://www.nationalskillsregistry.com/, aims to strengthen security in Indian IT and BPO by providing potential employers with information on employees.

The registry has been set up by NASSCOM in collaboration with the National Securities Depository Ltd. (NSDL) in Mumbai, which is also hosting the registry. The NSR has been designed to ensure authenticity of data through independent verification and biometric identification of employees, according to NASSCOM. Employees will enter personal, professional, and other information into the registry, and the information will be verified by independent agencies selected by NASSCOM and NSDL.

NASSCOM is looking at having a similar registry for employees of industry contractors as well.

Yet, the employee verification market has been growing in size since the last two years, though it is difficult to say how big it is exactly.

And it faces many challenges. Those in the business of verifying employees for a client have to build bridges with centers that host data – like universities, which have educational records - and consolidate relationships with information sources. This involves a lot of low-key spadework and an investment in time.