
Scammers gaming India’s overcrowded job market - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/02/the-scammers-gaming-indias-overcrowded-job-market
======
zacurry
I once got caught up in one of these . I was young , poor and had failed in my
engineering exams. I had no coding skills, but was hoping some company would
pick me up based on my math skills and train me (that is what most MNCs in
india like Infosys do). I was attending different tech job fairs, but would
get screened out at the beginning itself because of my lack of degree. But
then one company was fine with it and interviewded me but only after the HR
round was over did they say that they were a BPO . They claimed to have tie up
with a big MNC in india , and so off I went to join.

On my first day, I was given a script to learn and placed near a senior guy to
listen in on his phone call to learn from him. The scam was simple, they had a
website similar in name to yellowpages.com but not the real thing. They would
call up small businesses (mom and pop stores) in the US and tell them their
yellowpages listing was chargeable from that year, and if they don't pay 500$
, it would be removed. If someone other than the owner was attending the phone
and said they don't want it , they would use scare tactics like ,"this would
get your listing removed.Are you authorized to do that ?" etc. The main
targets were old people and less technologically savvy ones I guess. Once
someone agreed , the call was routed to another team some place else.

Long story short, I didn't go back after the first day- but my friend chose to
stay back. Many of them who attended the interview did . I don't have contact
with any of them , but now I wonder how many of them turned to bigger scams.
None of them had joined there thinking they would be scamming people. At no
point in the interview process did the company appear to be scam artists.

If anyone is wondering what I did after that, I borrowed some money, checked
out the cheapest training course available near by - it turned out to be php
(around 120$) and I landed a web dev role in 4 months.

------
valuearb
Reminded me we hired an indian android developer (contractor) through a phone
interview (in US). When “he” showed up for work, it wasn’t him. The contractor
who actually showed up couldn’t answer the same questions.

~~~
reallymental
Oh the old bait and switch works very well for telephone interviews. Remove
them ideally.

Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that
only he can give the interviewer back when they meet. Something that the
interviewee cannot pass onto the 'real' candidate who will appear on the first
day. On the other hand, fining the real candidate is the worst way possible,
it has to be better than that.

It can help prevent this attempt of 'baiting and switching' to a lesser
competent candidate in the first place.

The attitude should change from 'Oh I can give this test, I'll pass it for
sure and you can pay me $X for it', to 'Screw that, they'll find out
immediately that it wasn't me.'

~~~
pizza234
> Perhaps a solution to this could be to give the interviewee something that
> only he can give the interviewer back when they meet.

A video call as part of the hiring process, instead of a phone call, solves
the solution trivially. Since we're talking about software engineers, which
are (supposedly) used to these tools, there are no associated costs (I refer
human, not monetary ones).

~~~
reallymental
Yes, I did mention that they should remove the telephone interviews ideally.

I should have added the fact that skype would solve the issue as well.

But to this day, I don't understand why companies do a telephone interview.
Its certainly not cheaper than a skype interview.

Maybe you could argue against a video call by saying that the person might
grow a beard/shave their beard, put on weight/ lose weight, change their
appearance drastically by the time they come to the first day on the job. Or
the interviewee might be at their current job when they are interviewing for
the next, so that might throw some people off the process. Thirdly I think
some research somewhere might have said that a skype interview is more
daunting, and hence less people will apply for the job/qualify to the next
round as a result of the stress it causes and the telephone interview is just
less stressful on the candidate.

All possible, all equally rubbish reasons imho.

------
0xmohit
I guess that it can be partly attributed to the fact that Indians don't doubt
anything even if it's too good to be true.

A few years back a neighbor called upon us with his young son who had just
completed his graduation. It turned out that wanted to seek my opinion on a
job offer his son had received. His son had graduated from a tier-III
institute in India; below average academically and all that. Apparently he
received an email offering him a job in London, some 110K pounds/annum, all
without an interview.

I attempted to explain that it sounded fishy if not outright scam, but they
weren't ready to listen.

A couple of weeks later these guys told my Dad that the ones who offered the
job were asking for money under some pretext or the other and that they've
decided not to move ahead with it.

\----

The scammers realize that people are desperate, gullible and keep on tricking
people for years, even decades. Just like the Nigerian prince who was finally
nabbed last week [0] after a couple of decades.

[0] [https://www.theroot.com/white-nigerian-prince-email-
scammer-...](https://www.theroot.com/white-nigerian-prince-email-scammer-
arrested-in-louis-1821658205)

------
ryandrake
I'm always shocked that these IRS scams ever work, let alone consistently
enough to make them viable businesses. Someone with an Indian accent and
really bad phone connection calls you up and tells you they are from the IRS
and you need to pay them "taxes" with an Apple gift card, and people fall for
this?? First off, the government will never contact you by phone. I thought
everyone knew this but if not the FTC is here to remind you [1]. Second, even
if they did, wouldn't you require some kind of written evidence before you
paid? Third, Apple gift cards? Seriously??? I guess a fool and their money are
soon parted, but this is a pretty unbelievable level of gullibility.

1: [https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2013/08/whos-calling-
not-g...](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2013/08/whos-calling-not-
government)

~~~
zolthrowaway
It's at least partially fear. Fear can get people to do crazy things. Combine
this with the fact that many people are totally tech illiterate (think about
some of the elderly who call their grandkids every time they need to check
their email). I don't think it's very hard to see how something like this can
happen.

~~~
Waterluvian
If you're on Hacker News, I'll bet that 99% of your country's population is
less tech literate than you. It's too easy for us to enter that mindset of,
"how could X ever be? It's so obvious!"

My wife reminds me of this regularly =)

~~~
ryandrake
This one has nothing to do with tech though. It's just someone cold calling
you, claiming to be from the government and asking for Apple gift cards. You
don't need to be a tech wizard to understand that something is clearly amiss.

~~~
Waterluvian
That's true. I'm conflating tech literacy with some term I don't know. It's
the drive to be skeptical and challenge information against a logical
framework one has of the world.

I would say that it is a part of what "tech literacy" is. I've also got family
members who lack it entirely. It's rather bizarre to see someone affected so
wholly by new information without knowing how to even challenge that
information. "If X is true then why do we not see Y occur?" will usually be
met with a shut-down in conversation and a bring-up of hostility.

------
z3t4
> “In Delhi, you can’t become an important man without pulling some kind of
> fraud,”

This is not only a problem in India. We need to stop dealing with companies
that have bad ethics or values, so that they go out of business. Do not work
for them and do not do business with them. Sure you might lose money in the
short run, but we all win in the end.

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
It needs people to take a stand and I think that's what's lacking. Often the
alternative is not starvation so desperation isn't always an excuse. Look, if
everyone around you is a cynic, if everyone around you is saying you're a
dummy for being an honest person, if everyone around you is saying 'this is
the way things work around here', you need to be brave AND honest to push back
against that. Most humans (anywhere) just follow.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It is worse, consider officialdom in China where any highish official can be
brought down for corruption at anytime. So if you are clean, you won’t get
promoted, because your higher ups and peers can’t control you with that axe
over your head.

So ya, you can take a stand, but you aren’t going to go far enough in your
career for the stand to make much of a difference, cynicism or not.

~~~
jimmywanger
Whereas if you can't be brought down for corruption, you will get promoted
because you can pay your way off?

China's policy is fairly sane. Nobody except for the inner circle of the party
can take anything for granted. If you bribe somebody for advancement, if
caught, both you and the person you bribe get brought down and punished.
Probably a jail sentence, confiscation of any property that you might possibly
have gotten through dishonest means, and in severe enough cases, death.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
China’s policy isn’t sane at all. The lack of rule of law means a prosecutor
or judge just can’t go out and act on corruption complaints, the party is
internally policing itself (you have to be expelled before prosecution is even
possible). Who gets brought down for corruption often depends on who they are
aligned with, not what they actually did. It’s like wild parking in Beijing,
everyone with a car does it, only a very few are ever punished for it. Or the
fact that there are brothels everywhere except during CCP congress meetings,
law is selectively and conveniently enforced, not fairly at all.

------
yakt
I find it strange that some recruiters close the hiring process only with
telephonic interviews.

May be they don't have any respect for their job and their organizations. It
is not about the technique of hiring, it is the lazy unskilled people in the
hiring team who don't care about the employee's career and the organizations
growth.

So they get what they deserve.

May be if Facebook introduces a button for Add Employee, they will find it
more convenient and browse Facebook and start clicking Add Employee after
reviewing their profiles.

LOL, So funny.

Organization needs to pay attention and setup a hiring team who want to do a
good job in the task at hand.

~~~
pjc50
When employee turnover is extremely high and the job itself is a scam, it's
not about telephonic screening. It's about scamming as many people as possible
into working for the organisation. Quantity over quality.

------
Cenk
Reply All has a great episode on a similar kind of scam:
[https://gimletmedia.com/episode/long-
distance/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/long-distance/)

~~~
thesnooze
Thought of the same thing. The writer of the Guardian article is actually the
journalist the podcasters consulted with in part 2.

------
reallymental
edited: Some grammatical errors.

Great read, and full of issues that are discussed on HN everyday. Also, not a
new topic, the call centers have been on the decline for long, and for good
reasons.

> -today, young people from agricultural castes want to work in offices and
> not farms. I wondered what other options were open to them.

> Poojary read it out to me in his best American accent, which he had
> perfected by the end of his first week. He insisted that I play along as the
> unwitting American.

I'm South Indian, I didn't grow up there, but I can vouch for the
condescending tone of Snigdha (the author of this piece). It's very much like
how a condescending North Indian talks about a South Indian. And she's the
'educated' North Indian here talking to an 'un-educated' one. The
condescension is palpable, and present throughout the piece. I have not read
her other 2 pieces, but they're on similar topics, and I expect a similar
tone. I'm not sure if it is a reflection of her distaste for the people in
these highly questionable occupations, or just sprinkles of editorial hate.

> “America is full of old people who live alone. They have no one to turn to
> if anything goes wrong.”

I've heard many arguments about how its a cultural thing, old people in the
west (more weighted towards N-America) are treated as a burden. A burden on
the economy, a social burden (damn those annoying grandpa's and grandma's).
Isn't that why the 401k and MediCare/MedicAid exist? (excluding the set of
population that doesn't qualify for them) to pay them(selves) back for their
40+ years of service? I'd like to hear some fresh arguments/data on why they
are treated as such. I'd be grateful to anyone who points me to more reading
material on this topic.

> “It’s very easy to scam Americans. They are very gullible.”

It just becomes easier to exploit the opposite side if you just demean them a
little. Americans are fat and stupid, the British choose to chew their crap
food with their crap teeth, and don't get me started with those vodkaholic
Russians. Why don't we go a bit further, dehumanise them, then you're off to
war aren't you. I'm just pointing out the micro scale from which these
sentiments can snowball, nothing more.

~~~
DangerousPie
> I'm South Indian, I didn't grow up there, but I can vouch for the
> condescending tone of Snigdha (the author of this piece). It's very much
> like how a condescending North Indian talks about a South Indian. And she's
> the 'educated' North Indian here talking to an 'un-educated' one. The
> condescension is palpable, and present throughout the piece. I have not read
> her other 2 pieces, but they're on similar topics, and I expect a similar
> tone. I'm not sure if it is a reflection of her distaste for the people in
> these highly questionable occupations, or just sprinkles of editorial hate.

Maybe I just didn't pick up on it, but as someone who doesn't know anything
about the background of the author (nor about Indian stereotypes) this article
didn't seem condescending to me at all. Are you sure you're not just
projecting your own stereotypes about North/South Indians onto the author
here?

~~~
tacomonstrous
I'm South Indian as well, and I didn't pick up on any condescension. If
anything, the writer went out of her way to present the views of obvious
scammers as fairly as she could.

~~~
reallymental
My point was about the perceived superiority that some people have over the
others, due to their geographical/cultural/religious biases.

I mentioned I was South Indian to emphasise my bias towards such a tone.

But as I have acknowledged in my above comments, I may have looked at the
article through biased eyes, but I still think I'm right in my assumption
about this author's tone.

------
thisisit
This is like the boiler room stuff from "Wolf of Wall Street". Unfortunately
it is not reviled rather held in awe.

One thing which is never talked about in these articles is the failure of
Indian government (past and present) to find effective family planning
policies. Population growth is through the roof and hence unemployment is
huge. With not much left in terms of job prospects lot of people turn to shady
stuff.

And while the article makes a case for IRS and Microsoft scams, slowly these
guys are running domestic scams too. Lot of people receive calls claiming to
be from a particular bank/digital wallet company/phone provider. The victims
are asked to share the OTP sent to their mobile for "verification". These OTPs
are mainly for digital wallets. Once the scammers reset the password they
withdraw or spend most of the money in the wallets.

~~~
Retric
India only has a 1.2% population growth rate including an aging population
([https://www.statista.com/statistics/254469/median-age-of-
the...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/254469/median-age-of-the-
population-in-india/)) which is down from 2.2% in 1980 and well below it's ~7%
GDP growth rate.

They are simply dealing with the normal issues for a rapidly developing
nation. Plus the new generation entering the work force is based on their
population growth rate ~20 years ago.

~~~
thisisit
I am not sure what is the data source on statista but the last census happened
in 2011:

[http://www.simplydecoded.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/TH01...](http://www.simplydecoded.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/TH01_THERN_CENSUS_517537f.jpg)

The last decade was the only one where the population growth has slowed. And
even then the growth was ~17% in 10 years.

~~~
gilleain
This has a nice visualisation:

[https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2017/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2017/)

------
known
I've seen many H1B coders from India living in USA on fake "Salary"
certificates

------
known
Sounds like an Organized Mafia

------
jondubois
One of the first jobs I had was in a small call centre (doing cold calls). I
had to read a script asking random people questions about their financial
situation. I think it might have been a scam but I'm still not sure to this
day; it just sounded like a standard insurance questionnaire but I don't know
what they did with the answers that were collected. I got fired after 2 weeks
because my conversion rates were not good enough.

I think that these kinds of jobs are morally acceptable. You can't expect the
poor to behave ethically while the rich are screwing them over 24/7\. You
can't have a fair society without some degree of chaos and allowing people to
take matters into their own hands.

If we accept capitalism, then we must accept all the nasty things that come
with it.

Many people pretend that capitalism is just a matter of rewarding intelligence
over stupidity and hard work over laziness, but it's just as much about
rewarding selfishness over selflessness, deception over honesty, short-term
thinking over long-term thinking, etc...

~~~
ryandrake
The rich are screwing over the poor, therefore it's morally acceptable to scam
poor and middle class grandmothers out of their pensions? I guarantee it's not
the wealthy elite that are being targeted by these scams.

~~~
jondubois
They're wealthy compared to the perpetrators of the crime. If the 'victims'
understood the value of their money, then they would never give it to anyone
over the phone even if threatened with jail.

If someone wants to take my money, they'd probably have to pry it out of my
cold, dead hands.

