It doesn't pay to be untruthful at Wipro Tech

Bangalore-based Wipro Technologies is cracking down hard on fudging resumes. Starting February, the IT giant has terminated services of around 200 employees across locations for failing its background verification processes.

Pradeep Bahirwani, vice-president (talent acquisition), Wipro Technologies, reiterated that apart from the 200 people exiting the company in the fourth quarter of FY08, nobody has been laid off. "In fact, over 2,000 freshers joined us in March," he said.

Asked if the terminations related to false claims made on resume, such as wrong age, non-existent qualifications or technical certifications, Bahirwani concurred, "The terminations were related to false claims in the CV. Some of these false claims related to previous experience, salaries drawn in previous companies and duration of employment, among others."

It was not uncommon for leading IT companies to lay off personnel on anomalies in their resumes coming to light at a later stage. In some cases, such actions were taken four years after the employee had entered the rolls, industry sources added.

With this, IT majors such as Wipro, TCS, IBM, Yahoo! and EDS have collectively axed over 1,300 personnel in India in the closing January-March quarter of FY08.

In the first week of February, IBM, which employs 73,000 people in India, removed up to 600 personnel across locations in India, who had spent close to a year in the company. 
 

Q4 LAYOFFS Major items of India's Balance of Payments
Company	Reductions	Reasons cited
IBM India	500-600	Failed aptitude tests
TCS	500	Non-performance
Wipro Tech	200	Failed background  scrutiny
EDS (Mphasis)	130-200	Non-performance
Yahoo! India	60 (current estimates)	Strategic
Sources: Companies and industry inputs

These freshers were reportedly asked to leave based on their aptitude test performance, according to IBM sources. Tata Consultancy Services cited incompetence as the reason to remove 500 employees, while the 1,000-strong Yahoo! followed with 45 exit orders.

"Usually, about 60 to 65 per cent of our annual hires consist of freshers from campuses. Verifications are mandatory before any candidate joins the company," said a spokesperson of Chennai-based Cognizant Technologies. "We are also registered with Nasscom's National Skills Registry," he added.

From the third week of January, as reported in this paper earlier, EDS had laid off about 130-200 people on grounds of non-performance, mostly at its Chennai centre.

An EDS employee claimed that some of those laid off were asked to clear their desks at a 24-hour notice and forbidden by EDS officials from talking to anybody about it.

"Aptitude tests are a part and parcel of operational requirements and are taken seriously. As for false declarations in CVs, these can hamper projects, besides depriving deserving candidates more qualified to do the job. The trend of companies being forced to fire candidates for incompetence or false declarations could adversely impact the multiplier effect of tech jobs that is creation of indirect jobs in other sectors," said an HR executive of a leading recruitment firm.

A recent Nasscom-Deloitte study says that indirect employment is generated at the rate of four additional jobs for every job created in the technology sector.

This, notes the study, is socially relevant as nearly 75 per cent of the workforce employed in these indirect jobs are SSC or HSC passouts or even less qualified.

Besides, an output multiplier of almost 2 is effected through the industry's non-wage operating expenses, capital expenditure and consumption spending by professionals.

The estimated $40-billion tech services sector's contribution to the national GDP has increased steadily from 1.2 per cent in financial year 1997-98 to 5.2 per cent in FY07 and is expected to touch 6.2 per cent in FY08.