Part-1
Hindustan time article
One day after deepika chadha left ornatus solutions, another young woman showed up there from that weekend’s batch of trainees at divine kamal public school. Neetu khatri, a 21-year-old from narela with blond streaks in her hair, went through the same interview as chadha and was hired.
She learned that ornatus sells the services of a website by the name of jobishh. Khatri’s job was to dial numbers off a list and rattle off a script. She made a total of 160 calls on her first day of work. Each began the same way: “my name is neetu. I am calling from jobishh. We have your cv with us. Are you looking for a job or a job change? We have opportunities for you.”
In a matter of days, khatri had transformed from the victim of a fake-jobs scam into the perpetrator of one.
On may 31, naveen ramachandran, a 39-year-old mid-level manager in dubai, got a call from another jobishh employee reading off the same script as khatri. The person on the phone told him he had been shortlisted for jobs in three well-known companies in the uae, and that he needed to go to a website called jobishh and pay for its placement services. These include designer resume (Rs 3, 050), social media profile builder (Rs 4, 650), and live interview preparation (Rs 5, 050).
Ramachandran, who said he had been “desperate for a job”, duly chose the package suggested to him. One of the services was “international carrier expert senior level”, which cost rs 30, 000. Subsequent phone calls kept getting passed from one jobishh executive to another. “every time they told me that this is the last payment and they kept on demanding, ” ramachandran said. “i trusted them.” he made a series of payments on the website totalling, he said, rs 84, 750.
Only after he paid did ramachandran receive an email detailing the company’s terms and conditions, which include the line “jobishh does not and cannot guarantee any job or job offering, under any circumstances whatsoever”. The terms also mentioned that a refund must be sought within 24 hours of a payment. Ramachandran said he called up the company’s number asking for a refund just a few hours later, but was told that it was already too late. He decided he might as well go along with the process.
Tucked in the bowels of kirti nagar’s marble market, ornatus solutions employs nearly 400 people who work in two shifts. It usually takes them no more than a week to figure out their role in its job scam. (Ravi choudhary / hindustan times)
Over the coming weeks, he discussed revisions to his cv with multiple jobishh representatives. Mysteriously, these revisions did not appear in his profile on the website. He never heard from a single employer.
Finally, ramachandran went online and ran a search on jobishh. He could have spent days going through all the testimonials of jobishh victims on consumer complaint portals.
Twenty days after he was first called by jobishh, ramachandran received another call from them that caused him to freeze for its sheer brazenness. “[they] started with the same story that my cv has been shortlisted and [asked] whether i am interested and so on…” did jobbishh think it could scam him all over again?
According to smiley kapoor, who worked on the first floor of ornatus solutions for one month in late 2016, no more than four jobishh clients called the company’s landline asking for a refund over the duration of her employment. Most others, she suggested, were grateful to escape the con and carried on with their lives.
Why do hundreds of young employees participate in the jobishh’s con fully aware of its potential illegality and ethical dubiousness? “you think the people who run these call centres are making so much money every day, you might as well make some of it while you are here, ” said kapoor. She quit within a month of joining in late 2016.
Varun gupta, who worked at ornatus between august and september 2016, agreed. “if you can get one or two months’ room rent, then why not?”
“an informal arrangement”
There were 1.5 million job ads on jobishh’s website as of the first week of october. Most ended with the name of the same recruiting company: touching heights business solutions llp. Touching heights happened to be jobishh’s parent company. Going by registration records publicly available on the website of the ministry of corporate affairs, jobishh was only one entity in a sprawling network of companies and individuals running jobs scams.
One “designated partner” of touching heights, for example, is akash attre, who is also a “designated partner” of qserv business solutions llp. Qserv, in turn, owns an outsourcing company called trounce infotech and a jobs website called quickjobzz.com, which is a recurring name in consumer complaints about job fraud. Attre is one of trounce infotech’s co-directors; the other is his wife, shruti attre, who used to be an additional director of ornatus.
A network of companies, websites and individuals that make up a job scam
Shruti attre also used to be a “designated partner” of nownaukri llp, the corporate title of a jobs website company sued by naukri.com for impersonation and cheating. Shruti was the lead accused in that case. Of the two current “designated partners” of nownaukri llp, one, naveen bisht singh, is also a director of ornatus solutions; the other, hemant suri, was once a director of trounce infotech. He is the same man who was arrested by mumbai police in may for running a job racket.
Repeated requests for an interview with akash attre were declined by his office. His executive assistant, charu talwar, said that he is “not related to jobishh in any capacity”. “mr attre joined the board of touching heights a few months ago in the capacity of an investor, ” she continued, “but he resigned within two months as the business deal couldn't materialise.”
Speaking to hindustan times in july, the ceo of touching heights, lovjil mukund, denied that his call centre employees sell fake job offers: “jobishh promises neither jobs nor interviews. We provide three major services: résumé preparation, social media content writing and career consultant support.” so why did people receive calls from jobishh asking them if they want a job and claiming to know of specific offers? “we just inform the candidates about openings which we come across on the internet that matches their profile, ” he said.
The title bar of the website contained the words “recruitment”, “job search”, “employment” and “vacancies”. But “jobishh is not a job portal, ” mukund stressed. So why did its website regularly update job openings “across 41 industries”? He said the service was temporary. He also said that most companies listed on the website were placement consultancies with whom jobishh had “an informal arrangement. We pass the details of the candidates to these consultants and see if they have opportunities.”
Reached for comment, representatives of benette technologies and brill infosystems, two small tech companies that were listed as having openings on jobishh.com, said that they had never heard of jobishh. “we don’t post job ads online, ” said a representative of benette. “we have never advertised on jobishh.”
Mukund said he was not surprised by the companies’ responses. He suggested that it is not necessary for these entities — which were featured on jobishh’s website under the section “tieups with our company” — to know about jobishh. “we don’t sign a mutual agreement or engage in a formal tie-up with the companies listed, ” he said.
When jobishh came across job openings on other platforms, "we interact with the relevant contact person — hr executive or someone — and get the email id where one should send them the résumés."
Mukund said jobishh was happy to “refund money to those who misunderstand our services. We have a 24-hour refund policy.” yet naveen ramachandran said that when he asked for a refund, he was told that a “refund is not possible because the service has been activated.”
In august, a month after hindustan times interviewed mukund, jobishh added a blinking red banner to its website saying that the website “will never” ask people to make payments into “someone’s personal account”; that its clients should not share their financial information “with anyone”; and that jobishh cannot “guarantee any interview calls, job offers, or meetings with prospective employers”.
“out of the 160 people i called today, 10 said that they have experience with jobishh earlier and if i call them again, they will report it to the police.”
By the end of her first week at ornatus, neetu khatri said she’d learned the truth about her job. “it’s not a genuine company. They are scamming. I don’t know if they are providing these jobs and services. We can’t know the reality. But we have to convince the customers to sign up.”
She wasn’t finding the job easy. “it’s really hard to make a sale. It’s very easy for people to check the name online and find all the complaints. Out of the 160 people i called today, 10 said that they have experience with jobishh earlier and if i call them again, they will report it to the police.”
Khatri felt guilty participating in a scam, but she also felt she was being taken advantage of herself. Like most youngsters who go through the same journey — from uploading their cv online to showing up at remote corners of the city — she was slowly realising that if a job existed at the end of it all, it must come with a catch.
Read full article-http://www.hindustantimes.com/interactives/inside-fake-job-industry/
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