Chasing jobs, many fudge educational qualifications: Report

Fudging of documents and educational qualifications to land a job is on the rise: Survey

Fudging of documents and educational qualifications to land a job is on the rise, with the national capital and Mumbai topping the list, says a survey.

In an increasingly competitive employment, where jobs are hard to come by, many candidates across sectors seem to be fabricating documents and most of the times, such discrepancies are noticed during background checks.

Risk mitigation and business solutions provider First Advantage has found that there has been an increase in discrepancies in the education-related documents provided by candidates while applying for jobs.

The findings, for the fourth quarter of 2016, are based on an analysis of a large number of background checks carried out on potential job seekers by First Advantage.

The company claims that it conducts around six million background checks on behalf of various entities every year.

As per the survey titled 'Backgrounds Screening Trends - India', New Delhi and Mumbai saw a large number of candidates fabricating educational qualifications and producing fake documents to grab jobs.

"In a country as vast as India, it is not difficult to obtain fake degrees or marksheets. However, resume frauds can prove to be very costly as such things can tarnish the company's reputation along with the individual's career," First Advantage Managing Director Purushotam Savlani told PTI.

Further, the survey found that 85 per cent of the candidates who produce fake documents to get an edge over others were males.

Data was collected by First Advantage for background verifications and reference checks across diverse sectors, including IT, ITES, manufacturing, FMCG, retail, healthcare and telecom.

Unlike their counterparts in Europe, not many companies in India have made background check a mandatory rigour before recruiting a candidate, Savlani said.

However, he noted that more number of companies in the country have started doing that exercise.

"Government's digitisation drive to link data through Aadhaar is a positive step to make available vast database of individuals' information required for background verification," Savlani said.

Though the process might take some time for full implementation, he said linking educational and other details with Aadhaar would help companies make right choice of candidates.