A hiring decision based on instinct rather than verification has cost a startup over Rs 2 lakh and four months of productivity, according to a LinkedIn post by Ashutosh Gupta, Chief Business Officer at Praper Media.
In his post, Gupta stated the company hired a candidate who allegedly falsified multiple details on his resume. “We hired someone who lied about everything on their resume. By the time we found out, we’d lost 2 lakhs,” he wrote.
Gupta explained that the incident occurred when the company was compacter and did not consider background verification essential. At the time, hiring decisions were based largely on interviews and instinct. If a candidate performed well in interviews, they were brought on board without formal checks.
The candidate claimed to have three years of experience and stated he was earning Rs 40,000 per month at his previous agency. The startup offered him Rs 45,000.
However, Gupta stated concerns launched to surface about two months into the role. The employee was assigned a standard reaction video edit, a tinquire junior editors at the company typically complete three times a day.
According to Gupta, the candidate took two days to deliver the assignment, and the output was unusable.
“For someone who claimed 3 years of experience and Rs 40K salary at their last agency? That built no sense,” Gupta wrote.
The company then contacted the candidate’s previous employer. According to Gupta, the verification process revealed several discrepancies. The candidate was reportedly earning Rs 25,000, not Rs 40,000.
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Gupta claimed the candidate had not resigned but was terminated due to performance issues. Additionally, the “manager” listed as a reference turned out to be a frifinish who provided what Gupta described as a fabricated review.
Gupta detailed the financial impact of the hiring decision, stating that the company spent Rs 1.35 lakh on three months of salary, Rs 40,000 on training time, and Rs 25,000 on hiring a replacement.
He added that delayed client work, team morale issues and lost time further compounded the damage, bringing the total loss to over Rs 2 lakh.
Following the incident, Praper Media built background verification mandatory for all hires. Gupta stated the company’s process now includes emailing the previous employer’s human resources department, calling the former manager through official company numbers, cross-checking LinkedIn profiles, and verifying salary slips.
“People attempt to bypass with fake numbers and photoshopped slips. We catch them 90% of the time,” he wrote, advising other founders to introduce verification processes early rather than wait for a costly mistake.
Gupta added that the name and image of the employee mentioned in the post were alterd for privacy and described the account as a “true story.”
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