Preparing resumes with fake details of experience while hunting for a job may be the in-thing in the IT and BPO sector today, but it's meant only for the lesser mortals, says a new crop of professionals. For, they bank on 'ghost resumes' not to get new jobs but to test waters.
They use 'ghost resumes' with fake names to know the market demand for their subject and specialization and candidates with job profiles akin to theirs, besides to check the salary package they could demand from companies.
After landing in good jobs, a few IT professionals and those in the BPO/ITeS sector with around three years experience, sometimes fear applying for new jobs. Firstly, they are apprehensive of the growth prospects within their company if their superiors come to know about it. Secondly, as they are not confident of getting a better job, they fear announcing the job-hunting even to friends.
Hence, they prepare resumes that is true in all aspects, rather almost all. Except the names. They quote their real work experience but fake the organisations' names. Similarly with the education, the fake the college name but not the courses.
Take for instance, Shailendra working in the back-end operations unit of a multi-national bank in Bangalore. Three months in to the current job, he prepared a ghost resume and sent to some job search portals. “Though I am confident of excelling in any job, I am not sure whether top companies would like my profile. And if my resume is rejected now or I fail in the telephone interview, I will not be able to apply again to the company for at least six months. So, after seeing a few of my friends adopting this concept, I sent my ghost resume to some HR consultancies,” said Shailendra, who completed his BE in 2004.
So, when an IT major called him for an interview, and he also liked the job profile and the package offered, he rejected the offer, only to later apply with his original resume.
The interesting factor is that neither freshers nor those with five years or more experience resort to ghost resume, as the former have no experience to manipulate while it would be be difficult and risky for the latter to fake companies' names since they would have reached the middle level and it would be easy for the top companies to verify the claim made in the resumes before calling them for interviews.
Since those with only two-years experience would have joined the previous companies as freshers, top firms would wait till the candidate clears the final interview to verify the claims than to do it at the very first step.
Another engineering graduate from Chennai, Rakesh, working an Indian IT major, has gone a step further. He has a separate cell number for applying with ghost resumes and uses it for telephone interviews. If he gets through in such interviews, he avoids attending the personal interview citing either some personal reason or by asking unreasonably high salary. Through this, he not only learnt how much salary he can demand when he applies in his own name but also got a hands-on experience in attending telephone interviews.
Now, Shailendra, whose CTC is Rs 6.5 lakh, is sure he can get a job with a Rs8 lakh package, after some top ITeS companies evinced interest in him seeing his ghost resume, However, he feels it can get better and is waiting for a job offer with Rs 10 lakh CTC before he uses his original resume.
(This is the unedited version of what appeared in the paper around a month back)
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