A reputed firm was baffled when its Head of Operations didn’t turn up for work for a week without any intimation of the same. The management didn’t had any information of his whereabouts. Attempts to reach him through phone proved futile.
The security team decided to make a home visit. On reaching there, it was found that no one by that name ever lived there. His permanent address also turned out to be incorrect.
The candidate had worked in the organisation for a year and few months before he did the disappearing act. He had a pristine work ethic and was working with their key customers. Besides, within a very short span of time, he had struck an excellent rapport with all the customers. His customer management was so good that he was the sole point of contact between the customers and the organisation.
A digital forensics of his workstation and authorised systems didn’t reveal anything. Everything was in order. There was no evidence of a man leaving in a hurry or without a plan. Security experts concluded the exit was well planned. Questions baffling everyone were why a senior professional choose to leave unceremoniously and how a person could just vanish without a trace.
A Red Flag
Within a month of his disappearance, the management smelled a rat as one of company’s top customers terminated the contract and signed up with one of the competitors. They hired Stern Screening to conduct a background check on the candidate.
Stern diligently investigated the candidate profile with whatever information it could gather from the records collected during the hiring process. His previous employer, who was situated in a different city, claimed that an employee by his name had never worked in his organisation. When we investigated further into his employment before that, we learnt that he never moved to a different city. The past employment record was fake and from this company, he had reportedly moved to an organisation in the same city for a better opportunity.
The management got a rude shock when they learnt the truth. The organisation he moved to was none other than its arch competitor, the same one its key customers were now shifting to. The employee was a corporate mole, trained for insider trading. His game plan was to enter the rival camp and hijack key customers. And he met with success.
Later, the same mole was reported heading the international branch of the same company. That was his reward for pulling out some of the most important customers from their competitor.
The client was ruthlessly shaken from the myth that hires for senior positions do not need intricate background screening since they are experienced candidates. However, the reality is that these positions, being sensitive in nature, require Executive Background Screening the most. It was a lesson learnt the hard way.