Advice and guides / For employers
CV fraud in Indian hiring: where it shows up, and what to do
The problem is rarely an invented person. It is a real person with a real career described slightly larger than it was, and that is much harder to catch.
Outright fabrication exists and background verification firms find it. It is not the common case, and it is not the expensive one. The expensive case is the candidate who did the job at one level and describes it at the next, because nothing in a standard process catches it until they are in the seat.
The forms it actually takes
- Scope inflation. The team's work written as the individual's. "Led the migration" when they supported it. The single most common form.
- Title inflation. A real employer, real dates, a title one grade above the one on the payroll record.
- Date stretching. Gaps closed by extending the previous role by a few months. Catches out anyone who checks relieving letters.
- Tool listing. Software named on the CV that the person has seen demonstrated rather than used.
- Borrowed CVs. Rare, but it happens at volume, particularly for remote roles where nobody meets the person early.
- Proxy assessments. Somebody else sitting the screening test. Increasing, and easier to detect than most people assume.
Why background verification catches it too late
Verification is usually run after the offer, sometimes after joining. By then you have paid an agency fee, closed the requirement, told other candidates no, and started onboarding. Verification is the right control and it is in the wrong place in the sequence to save you anything.
It also checks a narrow set of facts well: employment dates, education, criminal record, address. It does not tell you whether the person did the work they described.
The screening steps that cost nothing
- Ask about their own CV. Two questions built from what they wrote. The order they did something in, and the thing that most often went wrong. Nobody who did the work struggles with this, and nobody who did not can answer it convincingly.
- Compare the answer's texture, not its correctness. A real answer names a system, a person, a month that was worse. A borrowed answer is correct and flat.
- Record time per question. Very fast on something that needs thought is a signal worth reading.
- Record paste events. Length and count, per answer, in free text questions.
- Watch for the same device or network on two candidates. The single strongest proxy signal, and it costs nothing to log.
- Ask for the relieving letter early, not at offer stage.
Keep it proportionate
Do not build an interrogation. Most candidates are honest, and a process that treats everybody as a suspect loses the good ones first, because they have other options. No webcam proctoring for an open pool: it costs you more candidates than it catches cheats. Log quietly, read the report, and use judgement.
And never reject on a signal alone. A flag means read the answer, not skip the person.
Every report we send carries a three state flag on whether the CV stood up to its own questions, with the answers that produced it. See what you receive, or read why the top score is often the wrong hire.