Facility Audits In India: Are You Verifying Employee Qualifications?

By Ed Miseta, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader

A recent article in Life Science Leader magazine, titled Competitors Collaborate To Train Asian Workers In Clinical Trials, addressed an interesting topic. When pharmaceutical companies are competing against each other, they generally do not share information or cooperate with each other. One area where they have opted to work together is the Asia Training Consortium (ATC), which trains Asian workers to better manage sponsor trials.  The ATC was founded in 2012 because major pharma firms found it was costing them 20 times more to train an employee in Asia than in North America or Western Europe.

It might be time for these same companies to come together to address another area of concern: the qualifications of employees working in overseas clinical and manufacturing environments. It’s not news to anyone that an employee, when applying for a position, might exaggerate or outright fabricate a piece of information on an application or resume. According to human capital management and research firm ADP, up to 46% of applicants commit some type of resume fraud. A report issued by security consulting firm Marquet International noted the top three most common lies were stretching dates of employment, inflating past accomplishments and skills, and enhancing prior titles and responsibilities.

A couple of things immediately come to mind when pondering this breakdown in honestly. First, it’s one thing to extend a date of employment to perhaps minimize the appearance of downtime between jobs. It is an entirely different scenario to fabricate a job altogether, or past educational accomplishments. Second, this kind of dishonesty may not have major implications for a mid-level management person working in a consumer product manufacturer. It has more severe implications when the applicant fudging the data is applying for a job in a company performing clinical trials or pharmaceutical manufacturing.