Do people know about fraud by third party IT consultancy companies?
This is just an effort to inform the folks on HN (Future CEOs of big companies :) ) about the routine fraud by many IT consultancy companies with fake resumes and fake phone interviews etc.
Since I am from India, I know of many small scale IT companies run by Indians in US which cheat both the clients and the candidates, with these tactics, but I suspect the thing is not necessarily limited to Indian companies.
Here is a typical situation:
1. The company recruits students / graduates without any experience promising them training and job placement. They don't need any CS or IT experience whatsoever, but they are promised they can get 60K+ jobs in whatever technology is.
2. The consultancy creates fake resumes for the candidates and starts forwarding them to other consultancies and clients etc. The guys routinely put 5 or 6 years of fake work experience without knowing a thing about the area.
3. Many companies don't pay anything to the candidates while they are being "trained", though they are paid on paper because of the immigration requirements.
4. When it's the time for the phone interview, the guy you are interviewing may not be real candidate. Or he may have a couple of other people also listening in and helping him with written answers.
5. Since it's just a contractor job many big companies don't even bother doing an in-person interview trusting the consulting companies.
6. It's possible that some of the managers in the big companies have indirect associations with these consultancies forcing them to stick to some consultancies despite getting really bad people from them some times.
7. Finally the guy who knows very little about the field will join the big company as a contractor, and the consultancy takes big cut out of his pay check.
8. The employee may get fired easily first few times, but he will gain legitimate US work experience in the meanwhile and the the previous experience becomes irrelevant.
4 comments
References:
1. This is a very popular classifieds service where many of these shady consultancies advertise free job training opportunities with free boarding etc. : http://ittraining.sulekha.com/itcourses
2.http://www.scholarshipforusa.com/2009/01/the-truth-about-ind....
3. This website has reviews of many such companies: http://goolti.com/faq.php, http://goolti.com/
4.http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f...
My wife had to deal with many such cases when they were hiring contractors in their group. A few simple checks that could be useful:
1. Request to have some date of birth, graduation date etc on the CV. It's by no means fool proof, but it at least prevents a 23 year old passing a person with 10 years of work experience.
2. Replace phone interviews with Skype interviews. She says many times they can actually see the candidates googling for answers and reading the top most result. Of course, they never hire such a candidate.
3. Maintain a company-wide data-base of who is hired/interviewed from which consultancy and if the there were any red flags. This will help other groups in a big company. Since there is a written record, people also tend not to interview from the same bad company again and again and wasting everyone's time.
1. Request to have some date of birth, graduation date etc on the CV. It's by no means fool proof, but it at least prevents a 23 year old passing a person with 10 years of work experience.
2. Replace phone interviews with Skype interviews. She says many times they can actually see the candidates googling for answers and reading the top most result. Of course, they never hire such a candidate.
3. Maintain a company-wide data-base of who is hired/interviewed from which consultancy and if the there were any red flags. This will help other groups in a big company. Since there is a written record, people also tend not to interview from the same bad company again and again and wasting everyone's time.
I have had multiple experiences with that. When I first put my resume up on Dice.com in 2009 after graduation, I was contacted by a lot of these IT companies. A couple of them gave me job offers just over phone interviews which struck me as odd at first but I was also a bit desperate.
Then, they tell you that they will provide you with 2-4 week training which allows you to lie on your resume and put down 5-7 years of fake experience. Their account managers send you job postings and ask you to create fake resumes that are specific to each posting and they have in-house people who proxy your phone interviews.
Really bad, but I think more and more people are catching onto it.
Then, they tell you that they will provide you with 2-4 week training which allows you to lie on your resume and put down 5-7 years of fake experience. Their account managers send you job postings and ask you to create fake resumes that are specific to each posting and they have in-house people who proxy your phone interviews.
Really bad, but I think more and more people are catching onto it.
It also happens here in India.
My sister works in a consultancy company.
Her resume was forwarded with 3 years of fake experience while she was just a fresher.