Startup faces Rs 2 lakh loss after hiring candidate with fake resume: ‘He lied about everything’

Hiring a candidate with fake resume costs startup Rs 2 lakh. (AI-generated image)

Hiring the right talent is crucial for any company, but even a single misstep can be costly. A man recently revealed, how a startup faced a loss of over Rs 2 lakh after hiring an employee who allegedly provided false information on their resume.

Ashutosh Gupta, Chief Business Officer at Praper Media, shared the experience on LinkedIn, warning other founders about the importance of verification. “We hired someone who lied about everything on their resume. By the time we found out, we’d lost 2 lakhs,” Gupta wrote.

Gupta said the incident happened when Praper Media was a smaller company and background checks were not considered necessary. “Back when Praper was smaller, background verification felt unnecessary. So we hired based on interviews and gut feeling. If someone seemed good in the interview, we brought them on.”

The candidate appeared confident and experienced. He claimed to be earning Rs 40,000 at his previous agency, and the startup offered him Rs 45,000. Problems began about two months into his role. “We assigned him a reaction video edit. Standard work. Our junior editors handle 3 per day. He took 2 days. And the output was unusable,” Gupta said.

“For someone who claimed 3 years of experience and Rs 40K salary at their last agency? That made no sense,” he added.

The company then contacted the candidate’s previous employer to verify his claims, and the verification revealed several discrepancies. Gupta revealed, “Lie #1: He was making Rs 25K, not Rs 40K. So we'd given them an 80% raise. Lie #2: He wasn’t "resigned." He was fired. For performance issues. Lie #3: The "manager" we called? Their friend. Glowing a fake review.”

Gupta outlined the cost to the company, Rs 1.35 lakh on three months’ salary, Rs 40,000 on training time, and Rs 25,000 on hiring a replacement. Plus, there was delayed client work, affected team morale, and wasted time. In total, the company lost over Rs 2 lakh and four months.

After the incident, the company made background verification mandatory. The process now includes contacting the previous employer’s HR, calling the former manager through official company numbers, cross-checking LinkedIn profiles, and verifying salary slips.

“People try to bypass with fake numbers and photoshopped slips. We catch them 90% of the time,” Gupta said. He advised other founders to begin verification early rather than “wait for a mistake.”

The post quickly drew reactions from LinkedIn users, with many sharing their own lessons from hiring challenges. One wrote, “A much-needed reminder for new entrepreneurs starting today. A hard lesson that should be better learnt from someone else's story, otherwise it would cost so much.”

Another asked, “It took a few rounds of interviews, 4 months more to understand he's not qualified enough? Don't you think it was a process issue on your side altogether?”

A third user shared advice from experience, “Skill tests > interviews for such roles. One of my clients lost Rs 1.2L on an 'Email Marketing Specialist' who couldn't write a cold email. I suggested to him a paid test project (Rs 5K) before the offer. Filters 80% of resume inflation. Background checks catch lies, but skill tests prevent hiring them at all.”

Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content shared on social media. Moneycontrol has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.