It is sheer folly to end up losing lakhs of rupees while trying to save a few bucks. This mainly occurs because we cut corners. Background verification is one such aspect that quite often goes neglected. Although it has gained momentum, it is yet to acquire the stature that needs to be accorded to it.

As per a survey conducted by the Economic Times, one bad hiring can cost Indian companies over Rs 20 lakh!

India happens to be a major victim of cyber attacks. More than 11.5 lakh incidents of cybercrimes within an organization were found out and then reported to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team in 2021 itself.

Just recently, the Directorate of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI), Ghaziabad Regional unit managed to bust a firm that was heavily involved in forming and then controlling certain smaller-sized bogus firms. They were issuing bills under these fake names of the firm but without the supply of either goods or services. This entire chain consisted of over 275 firms that only had a digital presence. They have managed to issue fake invoices worth INR 3189 crores. They also evaded GST of around INR 362 crores.

The monetary losses that take place on account of such fraudulent practices can’t be quantified for they are excessive. A huge amount of time and energy gets expended and there is no way of recovering those.

In Lucknow, a prominent bank’s manager had absconded with 45 crore rupees. After embezzlement, he had managed to remain undiscovered for about two years. The money spent on litigation proceedings and chasing him was considerably high. On deeper inspection and enquiries, the police found out that the bank would verify candidates through their HR Executives. In place of outsourcing the work of fraud mitigation to certified and authentic background verification firms, they were conducting their own half-baked screenings on the recruits. Consider the wastage of resources such as the cost of training him and recruiting. It was completely pointless in this case.

Finding job candidates is a costly affair. Typically, one has to subscribe to a job portal and pay a subscription fee that can be as high as INR 60,000. You then have to filter through the barrage of resumes either manually and spend many working hours doing so or you subscribe to an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to filter through them. The fees are upwards of $50/month. Once, you shortlist the right candidates/resumes you have to get a subject matter expert either by outsourcing the work (especially for highly technical hires in startups) or have someone internally conduct all the interviews. Once, you have found a few good candidates who qualify for the job, the CEO and HR heads have to sign off on the hire, which again take more man hours away from their busy schedule. Finally, an offer letter is given and sometimes even a signing bonus. Now, having gone through these hoops, if you end up hiring a candidate who has grossly exaggerated his/her/their resume, has a dubious reputation etc. it would be an utter loss of money, time and effort. Hence, background checks are the need the hour to filter out bad actors and only qualify the right candidates who deserve to work in your company and add value. The background checks can be pre or post-employment/onboarding.

As per Hindustan Times, social media crimes were up by 100 per cent in Pune in the year 2021.

Certain executives of a Bengaluru- based mid-tier IT firm were perplexed when their recent hire who happened to be a coder, refused their request to join video calls. Although they had interviewed him over video calls, they had their qualms when they saw a completely different candidate at the office. Impersonating someone is also a crime but some people are resorting to video morphing and audio proxy tools during the pandemic. In order to get hold of jobs, some people are willing to do anything even if it’s illegal. The end result of which is spending a lot of time mulling over why the productivity of recruits is not up to the desired levels. Explaining this to clients makes the company look extremely unprofessional as well. This is a major occurrence in industries such as Information Technology where hiring is done in bulk. Impersonation related cases have increased a lot during remote working and is also ruining company reputations.