If you thought that only some pilots fake their resumes, get your facts right. With the world getting competitive day by day, many people fake their resume to take a shortcut in their ladder of success in the corporate world. When you see your peers getting higher salaries and better compensation packages, you may be tempted to put some exaggerated details of your employment history to get a better deal from the company offering you the job.
Ronesh Puri, Managing Director of Executive Access, a head-hunting firm, believes that over 25 per cent of the applicants and existing employees in various companies fake their employment and education-related information. Be careful. You may assume that there is no way that the company you have applied would get to know of the fake details you have mentioned in your resume. However, you may be in for a rude shock as more and more companies are hiring background screening agencies to conduct a background check on your past including your professional experience and education.
Ads by GoogleJob Vacancies in TCS Exp: 0 to 13 Yrs.Sal: 25k to 95k PM Apply Now & get Multiple InterviewsTimesJobs.com/TCSUpload Your Resume Top Companies Hiring in Telecom Submit your CV on Shine.com Now!Shine.com/Telecom_JoSAP Certification @ NIIT Enrol in 4 weeks SAP Program. Build yourself a better Career.NIIT.com/SAPeducatio
Background screening
Background Screening Trends-India Report by First Advantage, a global risk mitigation and business solutions provider, threw some interesting facts about the discrepancies found while conducting background checks between October and December 2010.
Wayne Tollemache, Executive Managing Director – International at First Advantage says, “as we continue to dig deeper into our data to provide employers more visibility into screening trends, we see associate-level employees making up 63 per cent of reports with discrepancies, middle management 19 per cent and senior management 3 per cent.” The report mentions that applicants providing incorrect tenures of past employment is the single largest reason for the employment-related discrepancies. With the hiring sentiment observed across various industries remaining positive, many companies conduct background checks of their current employees as well as the applicants.
Faking certificates, salary details
Experts believe that faking education-related documents, salary slips from previous job and even certificates of appreciation is not uncommon. Since the background screening is still in its nascent stages in India, lot of people manage to get away with it. However, this should not motivate you to fake your resume as you would not come to know when your current employer or the company where you have sent your resume conducts a background check.
Editor of Jammag and a leading career counsellor Rashmi Bansal says, “a number of companies employ agencies to do reference checks. Points covered include qualitative factors like conduct and performance of employee in previous jobs as well as basics such as degree, experience and the length of service.”
Can be Dangerous for your career
Several multi-national companies are offering their background screening services to Indian corporates.While preparing your resume, remember that the company you are applying to may do background check on your past and if it finds any discrepancy on your resume, you may lose what otherwise could be a good career break.
Ronesh Puri advises, “it is dangerous to fake your resume as if it is found out later that the information you had provided in past was incorrect, you may be fired and that would create a permanent blot on the history of your career.” It will pay to be upright about your past employment details and if there is something negative which happened in your previous job you must mention it in your resume as you can always explain when you appear for the interview. Faking the same would be unethical and in case of getting caught, can be humiliating as well.
The world is getting smaller by the day as well as better connected. If you fake your qualifications or experience there is a high chance of this coming out later. In companies with strict code of ethics, this would mean losing your job. Even if you do not get sacked, you would lose credibility and trust and definitely not progress rapidly with this black spot on your conduct.
So, don't fake your resume.
ritukant.ojha@expressindia.com
Posts
