Hiring and Scams Hiring = Scam

H Shivaraj, 29, has cultivated a taste for single malt whisky and expensive watches in the last four years. The Bangalore resident wears a “modest” Omega Seamaster. “It’s 007’s watch,” he laughs. Shivaraj is a millionaire. Back in late-2004, Shivaraj was jobless. A BCom graduate stuck in a techie town. His break came in 2005, when his cousin joined a tier-I Indian IT services company as a HR manager. “My cousin told me that his company was looking for thousands of people for the IT services and BPO business, and asked me to set up an HR consultancy,” recalls Shivaraj. His cousin pulled some strings and Shivaraj was empanelled as an HR vendor in his company. Soon, business started flowing in.

By the end of 2005, Shivaraj had placed over 400 employees across half a dozen IT services companies, including Satyam, TCS and Oracle. He would earn one to two months’ salary as fee for every placement. All along, his cousin was getting a cut from the earnings. “Companies were in a hurry to hire. Employees were job-hopping all the time,” says Shivaraj. “I would set up two to three interviews for one person the same day. The faster the talent got placed, the more money I made,” he adds.

Shivaraj and his cousin had a good scam going. The IT companies he worked with were too busy to notice. Stories of similar scams abound in Bangalore. A few have been detected. “One of my good friends, the CEO of an IT company had a strange experience,” says a Mumbai-based COO of a mid-tier IT company. “His VP for human resources had left his mobile behind. Since the phone was ringing incessantly, he picked up. A voice on the other end said: ‘Sir, the money has been credited to your account. When can I collect the appointment letter?’” The VP was sacked, but the CEO continues to wonder about the hundred employees that the company added in that period.

A techie who spoke to Outlook Business says he was asked to pay Rs 15,000 as ‘advance’ for a job at a tech MNC two years ago. The placement agent promised to “tweak his resume” and use his contacts to secure a job. The techie got cold feet, and turned the offer down.

There were other scams. “You ask an employee with whom you share a good rapport to move to a new company,” says Shivaraj. “The first month the employee gets trained, the second month he works a bit. Once the third month is over, you get him to jump ship again,” he explains. Keep them hopping jobs. The employee wins: he gets two hikes in a short period. Shivaraj wins: he gets his cut once the employee completes three months. The company itself will shrug it off as attrition, considering that just a few of the 50-odd employees that Shivaraj ‘supplied’ quit early.
- (via Outlook Business)