Financial experts in Dubai today warned UAE companies not to hire “crooks” if they want to avoid falling victim to fraud.  Dubai World, says that more than 15 percent of executive résumés are falsified, while internal fraud on average slashes company revenues by around 5 percent.

Our own experience is that many cvs are works of fantasy.  I smile each day at the new inflated fancy job titles invented – two recent examples: Advanced Senior Consultant and Junor  Assistant VP  etc This is furthe rcompunded by grandiose and oftem falsified self publicity on various social media sites – is has almost got to the stage sadly that when someone with a profle on a Facebook or Linked In account  its a reason not to employ.  Exam dumps and cram courses substitrute for training and experience – the term expert is reduced to mean ‘;we covered it one afternoon during my course but it was a long time ago and I don’t really remember much about it’  as one candidate cheerfully confessed to me.

I have had the identical  cv provded by  head hunters several times  over with just the name at the top changed. And i lose track of how many times I find that 20 different people single handedly implemented the same solution for the same company, or who all claim to have been the Project Manager, or those who manage to fill up a side of a cv with their knowledge of an entreprise solution forq  job position that they  held for less than 6 months and never implemented nor on whch they ever  got trained.  

Wrose you wilfind many epxample sof people who fl,aisfy refereces by phtopyiong key sections from someone else”s and printing out on compsny letter head, or who misrepresent a letter to a bank as a statement of service etc.  So Caveat Emptor – fi you dont sk and you don;t check then ????? We have sometimes been stunned by some people who take references from us by claims made sometimes from people who have never even been employed by us !

Such nonsense affects employers, customners,  and other staff who have genuine experince and certifcations. So what can you do? First is to have a formal objective  interview and reference checking  process. Be suspicious of anyone who changes jobs mor than once in their career with less thna 2 years service is usually a sign they failed, or at least failed to get any worthwhile experience .  Anyone can make a mistake or just not fit in once, but they should not make it again and they when they have a long list of excuses about bad jobs and employers –  then it at least implies that their judgement and loyalty  is not so great.

Second is to have a probation period with some clearly defined, realistic and measurable goals.  

Third is to have some proper systems in place. 

• Appropriate IT systems:

 HR systems:

• A comprehensive  recruitment module is amsut for a busy HR department especially in an expatriate, often project based, job  market where labour turnover is inevitably higher. Manage cross compny applicants, the GRO and on board process.  and track multiple docuemnt expiry dates. HWta security checks are necessary for ecample in a hotel where staff have access to VIP rooms. How do you know they were not dismissed or rejected by another hotel in the same group?
• Make your HR  policies and processes transaparent via a self service portal and approval workflow
• Appraisal and training modules and employee survey tools can all help

IT Policy and Security

• Software to design and apply and audit IT policies  who cna access what and when and print what and copy what etc.  Who controls the  IT staff –  what stops a disgrunted employee going to a commnad prompt and entering   DEL *.*  or printing off the CEO’s payslip – how do you prove it?
• Access control to your office – biometric systems also need softwaee that can set access control rules by area, time, role etc and  interface with rostering and payroll systems. who leaves early and gets in late? Who does buddy punching for missing coleagues?
• Who spends time on  inappropriate   chat,  internet surfinf and dowmloading , emails large file attachments, accesses and pritnes confidential files, prirgs perosnal documents,  sends flame mails,  does not comply with coroorate house rules with regard to house rules of emails, disclaimer messages etc
• Do you have approriate maitenance and back up and failover systems systems in place in case of  system crashes due to incompetence, exposure to virus attack or deliberate theft of documents  and files?

Its a trusim that a company is only as good as its staff and hard working loyal employees suffer when unqualified inexperienced or deceitful or lazy and disloyal staff exploit them and their company

We offer advanced systems to address all of these issues:  Biometric devices, Access Cotnrol and T@A software, CCTV systems,  Collboration and Self Service Portal, Audit and Compliance tools, IT policy enforcement tools, silent network montioring tools with drilldown dashboards of e.g. top 10 sies accesses, who uses most bandwidth or tries to access secure foklders or banned sites, who copied or printed what, with drilldown to  evidential  recordings, failover disaster reocvery, Email managemnt etc. .

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Firms also need to carry out adequate reference checks and personal assessments if they want to reduce corruption from within their organisation, Ali said.

Other panelists added that many firms were unknowingly hiring workers without assessing them for illegal activity previously.

“There is a background check done on individuals coming into the country,” said Tania Fabiani, who heads up the Middle East Fraud Risk Assurance Services at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

“[But some companies] fail to realise that the background check is actually done from a political and religious perspective rather than criminal background, so does this person have a bankruptcy or drug history or have they committed a misdemeanour in the country that they came from?

“I really think for discipline to exist… you need a culture of corruption prevention.”

Recent figures from the UAE’s State Audit Institution (SAI) said authorities are currently seeking to recover more than AED1bn (US$272.4m) lost due to misappropriation of public funds, forgery, fraud and bribery.

In a statement released by official UAE news agency WAM, the SAI said it had referred more than 10 cases of corruption to the Public Prosecution department in the last two years.

According to PwC’s Middle East Economic Crime Survey, more than a quarter of businesses and organisations in the region have also reported economic crime in the last 12 months, with main crimes being asset misappropriation, bribery and corruption, cybercrime and accounting fraud.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they would likely to face bribery and corruption in the next 12 months, a rate which is much higher than the global average of 23 percent.

The survey also revealed that fraud detection mechanisms in the Middle East were not as robust as other regions, and two in five respondents reported that their organisations have not performed a fraud risk assessment in the last 12 months.

Some 69 percent of those surveyed said the most serious fraud incidents were committed by internal perpetrators, typically male, between 31 and 40 years old, a graduate degree holder and someone who had been with the company for three to five years.

Almost half of those surveyed reported that incidents of fraud had cost their organisations between US$100,001 and US$5m in the last year