Did Cognizant also fire staff for using fake documents to land jobs?

Close on the heels of Accenture firing some employees in its India unit for producing fake documents and experience letters to bag a job, now Cognizant India has revealed something similar.

The information technology company has reported about six per cent attrition in Q3, and it appears that some of those affected had failed to clear their background checks.

Rajesh Nambiar, head of Cognizant in India has reportedly expressed concerns over the rising involuntary attrition, especially in the IT sector.

He told ToI that Cognizant has zero tolerance for those who fail to clear background checks or are discovered to be unfit to continue in employment.

Due to the urgency in filling vacancies and with the demand for talent being high, organisations often delay background checks and schedule them for later, that is, after the candidates are onboarded. After all, background checks are time consuming and undertaking the exercise before selection of the candidates may mean checking the backgrounds of even those candidates that are not serious about taking up the role in the first place. That only leads to further delay in onboarding at a time when the talent shortage needs to be met fast, most of the time almost immediately.

Sometimes, during the time-taking background-check process itself some of the good candidates may opt for other jobs or take up other offers and may be lost to the company forever.