An Air India pilot suspended recently for producing a bo gus Class 12 certificate, Goa minister Sudin Dhavalikar's graduate degree being questioned, and former Delhi law minister Jitender Singh Tomar's arrest in an alleged fake degree case... these aren't isolated cases.
According to a new report by HireRight, a US-based provider of employment background checks, 23% of more than 2 lakh inspections done in India from January 2014 to April 2015 yielded discrepancies.
“There are thousands of fake universities and bogus institutes in India.This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to forgery,“ says Kamesh Kiran, who heads IBC India, a verification company in Bengaluru which handles 7,000 checks a month for IT, pharma and construction companies. They spot a 30% discrepancy in educational qualifications.
“There has been a surge in the number of fake certificates over the last three years. A man earning Rs 2.75 lakh a month at a prominent IT firm was outed after three years in the company. He was using his wife's certificates as his own. He had fooled the internal checks of the company when he was hired. It was his angry wife who ratted him out,“ says Kiran.Sandeep Dhupia, partner and head of forensic services at KPMG India, which runs about 50,000 checks a month, sees discrepancies in two areas -previous employment and education.
“We see the highest rates of discrepancy for the BPO sector. People who fudge are getting smarter. There was the case of a guy who provided fake certificates from a prominent university and got a website done with the credentials. The mock website had an .org domain instead of the real .in domain. The phony site looked as good as the original,“ he adds.
First Advantage, a leading verification agency , has seen discrepancy levels rise from 10.5% in 2014 to 11.4 % in just the first quarter of 2015.
The agency reports that Delhi, Ranchi and Kanpur are the cities topping education-related discrepancies, while Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai have the most employment-related discrepancies. Navin Chugh, MD and SVP, First Advantage, says, “There are several companies that open up temporarily and give fake certificates.“
It's not just freshers that fake it, CEOs and CFOs also don't always tell the truth. Sarita Deorukhkar of Verifacts, a background screening and verification company in Mumbai, says, “CEO applicants give phony salary slips and designations. Some even hide sexual assault or harassment cases.“
In the case of senior management hires, corporates are requesting integ rity checks as well.
Dhupia says, “We look at professional misconduct, controversial exits, ethics and integrity issues, management style and social behaviour for senior level hires.“
For most agencies, checking educational qualifications involves writing to the universities to check if the person did study there; for criminal records, online court records or the local police station is checked. Major clients are in the IT, ITES, pharmaceutical, banking and finance and hospitality sectors.
“A lot of cab companies like Meru also approach us to check their drivers,“ says K V Narendra, CEO of Rezorce.com, a verification company that has a database of 10,000 bogus companies on its website. “The companies not only give a fake recommendation letter, but also have a call centre that responds to a “checker's“ call, sends a fake email promptly, and, for Rs 15,000, gives you a year of experience on your CV ,“ says Narendra.
This rise in faking it is good business for background checking companies. “The verification industry in India is Rs 200-250 crore. KPMG's Verifications practice is growing rapidly, clocking 40-50% revenue growth year on year,“ says Dhupia, who adds that they will be looking at hiring more employees for the forensic audit team, which stands at 850 people in India.
First Advantage has 4,000 employees and saw a 30% rise in profits last year.Staff has grown 50% in the last four months. “We are hiring aggressively.Many are approaching us for back ground checks from Tier II and III towns,“ says Chugh.
While there is no legal requirement for companies in India to conduct background checks, companies are making sure they get it done. Multinationals go a step further and do cross-audits.
“Companies may send our data to another verifying a g ency. It is a smart way of double-checking,“ says Dhupia.
Latching on to this surge are private investigators who probe fake qualifications for matrimonial matches.
“We charge around Rs 5,000 per person for a full check,“ says Sunil Sharma of Authentic investigation in Delhi.“Many grooms give fake salary figures, and the most common fake degree in the matrimonial market, is a MBA.“
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