My brother recently experienced the "attitude" of recruiters for MNCs in India. He has written about it in his blog and I wanted to highlight the unethical practices adopted by these companies to lure candidates (inconveniencing them and making them waste time, effort and money) merely for updating their resume database. Note this point: my brother was called by an employee of that MNC for the interview (through the referral program) assuring him that he qualified on the basis of experience, so it was not a fake e-mail by any means. But thanks to the dumb-ass HR people at that company, he was rejected because he was not "experienced" enough. What makes it really pathetic is that he has not even received an apology, let alone a clarification from this contact person who misled him.

You can read the full story here:
Link to the article

The gist of what happened:

1. My brother got referred by an employee of an MNC for an opening in that company.
2. The employee clarified the requirements and assured my brother that he does qualify as his resume is suitable.
3. My brother attended the first interview in Chennai, where he got rejected on the basis of experience required, but the HR staff told him that his CV will be "considered" by the business team as it looked impressive.
4. My brother asked for clarification and the employee once again assured him that the experience required is 2 years+ and not 3 years as mentioned by the HR staff.
5. My brother forgot all about it, but once again got an e-mail from the HR department of the same MNC calling him from an interview. My brother assumed that the business team had considered his resume as suitable and went to Bangalore on short notice to attend the interview in spite of a cold and fever.
6. HR staff at Bangalore once again rejected him on the same basis.
7. My brother wrote to the employee who had originally referred him but hasn't got any clarification or apology till date.

On neither occasion did he get a chance to prove his merit on the basis of skill and qualification because on both occasions the interview closed when they saw that he didn't have 3 years of experience. What truly annoys me is not that he got rejected, but the indifference and the arrogance of those HR staff who either have no idea how to scan a person's resume or are merely lazy to do so and then have the audacity to point out that my brother should have read the e-mail carefully when he was clearly misled by the assurance given on the earlier occasion.

I think it's a problem that needs to be highlighted because the practice is clearly unethical and yet a lot of HR "agencies" or middlemen do this by sending unsolicited e-mails to masses of unsuspecting people without any kind of screening process merely to collect a data bank of resumes/contact details. This is plain spamming and gives these people a bad name. But what is even worse is when a company directly indulges in this kind of practice. Thanks to their criminal carelessness in the "screening process", my brother spent a horrid weekend travelling up and down at his own cost at extremely short notice (with a running nose and fever) and returned empty-handed.

Too often companies get away with such kind of malpractices and the media doesn't really catch on to it because it's not a "sensational" story.