Interestingly, this is not the first time that such a senior level employee has been caught lying in his curriculum vitae (CV). In most of these cases, reported primarily from the western countries, strict action has been taken against the errant employees irrespective of rank and associated prestige. Had this kind of a case emerged in India would action have been taken on this scale? In fact, in a country like ours where a person is trusted more for his word and background checking seldom done, would falsification of this nature have been discovered at all? It is very doubtful. Even in a day and age like this, most HR managers in top companies say that they conduct background screening only when doubts emerge. M S Venkatesh, who heads HR at Educomp, one of India’s leading education companies, says, “Honesty and integrity are personal issues. We generally tend to believe a person if he or she claims to have a certain educational qualification but if we discover during an interview that something related to qualification or experience is not aligning, we go for a check.” What do they do when this kind of a misrepresentation is detected? He says, “We don’t hire that person.”
But background screening agencies which have sprung up in India since the last five or six years, say that just letting employees go is not the right option, action should be taken against such people.
