Beware of job consultants, if you are waiting for your first job in an IT company after completing a job-oriented computer course.
Gangs of fake manpower consultants operating from Hyderabad - billed as one of top IT hubs in the country- are waiting for an opportunity to fleece you. In the past two years alone, 22 criminal cases relating to cheating by job consultants were registered by Madhapur police of Cyberabad.
There could be more such instances of cheating as not all victims approach the police for various reasons. Names of consultants, victims, money involved and jobs offered vary, but almost all of them follow the same modus operandi, say Madhapur police.
Consultants send their employees to collect details of IT job aspirants who undergo training at various computer training institutes located in areas like Ameerpet. There are hundreds of institutes in the city, offering training in computer courses like SAP, ORACLE, JAVA that are high in demand.
“Consultants go to these institutes, collect e-mail ids, contact numbers of candidates undergoing training there claiming that they would help them find jobs,” Madhapur Inspector Kalinga Rao told The Hindu.
Then they start bombarding the job seekers with text messages or e-mails offering ‘help to land in job for a fee’. Those waiting for a job easily get lured by such baits, he explained.
When job seekers turn up to find out their prospects, the consultants assure all help.
“We will give you training for a few months and then secure you job in an upcoming IT company,” is what most of these conmen tell the candidates.
What makes the jobless fall prey to these conmen easily is the assurance that the candidate would get some salary even during training period. The consultants make the job aspirants sign some papers ensuring that the assurance they give is not legally binding.
In their eagerness to grab the first job, all candidates sign without verifying the content or its legal implications.
The fact that they were taken for a ride dawns on them slowly when the ‘salary during training stops’ and the ‘placement in IT company’ never materialises.
“I paid ₹1.4 lakh to a consultant. The salary of ₹ 8,000 a month stopped after three months. In fourth month, the company closed,” Srinivas (name changed), an engineering graduate, said. He is a complainant in one of the 22 such cheating cases.
Even as the police are on the hunt for such fake consultants, nabbing many, fresh graduates aspiring a career in IT are still getting trapped.
