Accenture fires employees who used fake experience letters

Accenture is said to have fired a `sizeable’ number of its employees in India after the tech major found out some of its employees had produced fake documents and experience letters to obtain jobs in the company.

According to conversations on Twitter, , the company may have let go of ‘thousands’ of its employees who were found to have furnished fake experience certificates to get jobs in the company in India.

Responding to a query from The Hindu, Accenture India said in a statement: “We have discovered an effort to use documentation and experience letters from fraudulent companies to obtain offers of employment from Accenture in India”.

“As a result, 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,” it added.

Accenture further said it operated under a ‘strict Code of Business Ethics and mainted zero tolerance for any non-adherence’. “We are continuing to hire, and honour existing job offers for qualified candidates,” it added.

The pandemic brought in an avalanche of opportunities for tech firms and they were forced to rapidly onboard thousands of people to be deployed on projects, as per sources in the recruitment industry.

In most hiring cases, the recruitment processes were conducted in a ‘tearing’ hurry. Onboarding took place without ‘proper’ background checks and verification. Interviews, induction and training were done online, said B.S Murthy, an industry observer and CEO, Leadership Capital, a CXO hiring outfit.

“A monumental mistake has happened while hiring during the pandemic. Now skeletons are tumbling out of the closet as functions and faces started moving from virtual to real realms. Not just Accenture, most HROs are busy working on credential checks of their Covid recruits now,” he added.