IITian spins web to catch fake CVs !!!

Publication: Times Of India Bangalore
Date:Feb 13, 2007
Section:Times Business
Page Number:19


















Companies beware : IITian spins web to catch fake CVs

R Raghavendra | TNN

Bangalore: Fake CVs have been playing havoc in the recruitment market, compelling companies to spend exorbitant amounts to do pre-hiring or post-hiring checks through third party agencies.
Now, it looks like the internet could make this a simpler and more cost effective process. Mahendra Pratap, an alumni of IIT-Kanpur, has created a portal that allows anybody to add comments about a candidate whose resume is available on the site. The idea is to build trustworthy referrals within the portal that can give comfort to potential recruiters.

The process is simple: You upload your resume and ask your previous employer or colleagues to comment about your personality on the website. Any prospective employer gets to see your referrals and saves his time in making checks about you. If you fake your referrals, your present employer has the opportunity to write his views about you, marking you as a fake for your next job.

Referrals have built a huge amount of credibility among other portals like eBay and LinkedIn. Says Madan Padaki, cofounder and director of Merit-Trac, “A lot of companies make their hiring decisions based on what your colleagues and friends think of you in LinkedIn. Companies look for trustworthy referrals. eBay too rates both its buyers and sellers in order to tell people the actual worthiness of the people who are transacting business.’’
LinkedIn is a business oriented social networking site used for professional networking.

It has over 9 million registered users across 150 industries and over 400 economic regions (as classified by the service). The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. One can even gain introduction through a mutual, trusted contact. Employers can look out for potential candidates.

In Mahendra Pratap’s portal mohanchoti.com, a company on the look out for candidates pays a one-time fee to the portal and later pays for every reference concerning a particular candidate. Pratap’s concept is patentpending, and barely three months since its founding, the portal has a database of 40,000 CVs and over 15,000 referrals. “Over and above all the checks, if we still hire a candidate who is unworthy of the post, then we have a chance to post our views in his resume. That would make his future employer know about him.

Compared to the traditional reference checks, the advantage here is that we have a ready base of references to begin with,’’ says Nitin Singh Yadav, VP in online movie rental company seventymm, one of Pratap’s clients.

Three other IITians have now joined Pratap and the firm is working to increase its database, “so that we can serve the needs of bigger companies,” says Pratap.

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