How Can We Tackle Corruption in HR Recruitment and Protect Jobseekers?

Corruption in HR Recruitment: A Call for Awareness

This is an interesting article on the corruption of HR professionals, especially recruiters. Hiring scandal: How corrupt recruiters are cheating jobseekers, colleges, and IT companies - Business Today. Please read the full story. Let's identify such people and spread awareness among others.

Regards,

Thank you for sharing the article. Kudos to Business Today for their exposé. However, the exposé has come a couple of years later. Corruption in campus interviews is one thing, and corruption in regular recruitment is another. I have heard that there are HR or Recruitment Managers who have floated recruitment companies in the name of their wife or some relative. This recruitment company is an "approved" vendor. Whenever there is a job vacancy, the company contacts other recruitment companies, but practically each position has to be routed through the wife's company. The wife's company keeps 1-2% profit, and the other portion is given to the original recruitment company that conducted the candidate search.

In some cases, my friends have mentioned that to become an "approved" recruitment partner, HR charges anything above Rs 1 Lakh, depending on the volume of the business.

Anyway, these are the blues of "outsourcing." When will the IT panjandrum wake up to stem this malaise? Only God knows!

Regards,
DVD

While the exposé does indeed look scary, I second Dinesh Divekar about corruption in regular recruitment. The whole irony of the situation today is that everyone was silent when it all began way back in the late nineties during the Y2K hiring boom. Not sure how many today recollect that phase in the Indian IT industry when the people needs were in lakhs and that too within a span of 1 year; they needed to be hired 'come what may,' except that at that time, it was the IBM Mainframe Training Institutes rather than Engineering Colleges.

I have had firsthand encounters with recruiters of well-known IT majors who point-blank used to mention what their 'rate/cut' was. That was the period when none at the top encouraged any talk of corruption in the IT industry. One of the major pioneers in this game in the Y2K era, so to say, has been a major IT company that's still in the news, on and off, for all the wrong reasons (and which changed hands in 2009—no prizes for guessing).

Looks like this only proves all over again that 'a stitch in time saves nine.' When things were still at a starting phase, everyone took a 'holier than thou' stand. I recollect the local HR Head from one of the IT majors mentioned in the report saying 'it can't happen here,' and now they wrack their brains on what to do.

In a way, maybe we Indians learn and act only when things get desperate or critical, like it's been happening all over the country in a wide range of areas.

Regards,
TS