The Indian arm of global IT services company Accenture has fired a large number of employees for securing job offers from the company using false credentials and experience letters from fraudulent companies. The number of Accenture employees who committed the fraud is unknown, however, there are speculations on Twitter that thousands of people were caught. This occurs at a time when IT companies are finding it difficult to understand trends like moonlighting or personnel with side jobs.
Accenture fired the employees after the company found that there is a racket that supplies fake credentials and documents to people to help secure jobs.
According to a report by The Hindu, Accenture said in its statement, “We have discovered an effort to use documentation and experience letters from fraudulent companies to obtain offers of employment from Accenture in India. We have exited people who we confirmed took advantage of this scheme. We have taken action to ensure that there will be no impact on our ability to serve our clients.”
Accenture added that it operates under a strict Code of Business Ethics and maintained zero tolerance for any non-adherence. The statement said, “We are continuing to hire, and honour existing job offers for qualified candidates.”
The IT company, on its website, as part of recruitment procedure has mentioned, “Please note that we have not authorized any agency, company, or individual to collect money or request any monetary arrangement in order to receive a job at Accenture. At Accenture, our hiring is based purely on merit—we do not charge a fee at any stage of our recruitment process. Legally, we are not obliged to honor any job assurances made by third parties in exchange for money.”
The company also alerted job seekers about fraud agencies charging money from the candidates and luring them into getting a job in Accenture. The statement of the company said, “We have been alerted to the existence of fraudulent messages asking job seekers to set up payment to cover various costs associated with establishing employment at Accenture. No one is ever required to pay for employment at Accenture. If you are contacted by someone asking for payment, please do not respond.” This note has been on the company website since quite some time now.
While the number of people relieved from their jobs by Accenture is not known, several social media users are claiming that thousands of people may have been fired. It is notable that Accenture employs a large number of people in India, and in April this year it was reported that Accenture India’s employee strength had reached 3 lakh. The company had 2,50,000 employees in September 2021, which means 50,000 people were recruited in just six months, signifying the recovery after the pandemic.
The company has over 7.2 lakh employees globally, which means India’s share in its manpower is significant at over 40%. The company added over 1.6 lakh employees last year.
How did it happen?
Rapid staff recruitment to meet growing pandemic needs may have caused the error that led to techies with dubious certifications entering various organisations across industries. Several human resources managers across industry are reportedly currently scrutinizing the experience letters and other records of individuals employed during the epidemic surge. In addition to not doing background checks before recruiting new personnel, the pandemic’s unpredictability caused techies to choose side jobs, which sparked a moonlighting issue in the IT industry. Moonlighting has been used as an excuse for significant layoffs at companies like Infosys and Wipro.