An Indian boss took to Instagram to share what she called, “hiring horror” story, adding that “every time she feels like nothing can be worse than this, someone surprises her”.
Arshia Kaur said that she hired someone for the Head of Marketing position in 2024, and on paper, he was “amazing”. He also walked her through his CV and highlighted how he contributed to the growth of previous organisations.
“Everything looked extremely legit because we actually saw the backend. So, we ended up hiring him, and within a month, something felt off,” Kaur said in a video on Instagram.
She added that the person could neither communicate with the team nor with the bosses, and that he couldn’t complete his tasks. “All his tasks were given to other team members, or it was put on us because he was unable to fulfil them.”
Kaur, after multiple discussions with her employee, decided to fire him after over 2.5 months. However, since she was curious as to why the person wasn’t able to deliver, the team went through his paperwork.
“We went through his salary slips, letters of recommendations, etc, and found out that the person scammed the company with fake salary slips,” she revealed.
But how was he able to fool them initially?
Kaur said that the team overlooked the salary slips earlier, because people usually don’t submit fake ones since it’s an offence.
As per the salary slips he submitted, he worked for 31 out of 31 days, without any leaves. The salary slips he submitted had no stamps of the company or signature of the authorised person, and had 0 tax deduction. “And the worst of it all, the salary slips were made on an Excel sheet.”
When they confronted him and asked him to show his bank statements if he had received such an amount in his bank account, he was in for a shock. He reasoned that the company paid him a lot of amount in cash.
“Honestly, as founders, this was such a huge wake-up call, and it’s so important to do your due diligence and make sure that if something seems fishy, you need to ask questions early,” she said towards the end of another video on the same scam.
Kaur advised, “When you’re bootstrapped, every single penny matters; it’s shed-earned money. You cannot pay people whatever they ask for – founders, please don’t do this. It’s your right to have the correct information about anyone you’ve decided to hire!”
‘How does your HR verify documents?’ asks social media
“Hiring these days is super tough because this generation lies a lot. We conduct a 2-hour interview after the technical round, and the whole agenda is to cross-question them so thoroughly that they eventually fumble on the numbers and get caught. These days, people with just 6 months of experience demand 10 LPA, and some jump from 3 LPA straight to 8 LPA,” one Instagram user claimed.
Another asked, “How did you hire a head of marketing without a reference check and background verification. It would have easily been flagged there. And how does your HR verify the documents before closing the offer?”
“Never go ahead without ref checks from seniors – you live and you learn!” commented a third.
A fourth posted, “I work with a leading R&R Fintech firm, and we too hired a h.o.m recently. This exact same thing happened with us as well, and that guy was from eye eye em, at least on paper.”