A fake interview call letter of Fortis hospital has been doing rounds on the internet as scammers try to bank on the rising aspirations of candidates and growing unemployment in India.
The call letter – supposed to be an "online campus selection process" – demands the candidates to deposit a "refundable" interview processing fees of Rs 9,880. "If you are interested so complete The Payment process immediately. Otherwise Leave it. Don't waste your time (sic)," the letter says.
After the candidate pays the fee, they are supposed to obtain their call letter, admit card, flight/train tickets to travel to the venue of the interview and accommodation in the city.
To receive the bank account details for the transaction, the candidate is required to call a HR Manager named Dr Anurag Chadda.
International Business Times, India, contacted Chadda to obtain his explanation for the processing fees. "This is just a measure to assure the company that the candidate will attend the interview. If the candidate fails to appear for the interview, all the expenses paid by the company go to waste," said Chadda.
The last day for processing the fee is February 8, until 8 pm.
But is this usual?
However, according to experts, the modus operandi of a job scam is to ask the candidates to deposit registration fees, especially via bank transfers or e-wallets.
"Under no circumstance is the candidate asked to pay in any form for their candidature. If that happens, it's an immediate 'no go'. No matter how much the fraudsters try to convince about the need for any such transaction. This is an absolute red flag," co-founder and EVP of TeamLease Services Rituparna Chakraborty was quoted as saying by Economic Times.
Raising further suspicion, the questionable call letter mentions that the deposit will be refunded to the candidate on the day of the interview "in cash".
"Your amount will be refunded to you on the same date of your interview in cash mode only and for this you have to show the copy of your bank deposit slip to your Account manager on the date of your interview to take your amount back (sic)," the letter reads.
All that is suspicious about the letter
These are not the only elements that raise a doubt regarding the authenticity of the offer. The letterhead features the logo of Fortis and mentions 'Mohali', suggesting that it is from the Mohali centre of the hospital.
When Chadda was questioned regarding this, he said it is because the head office of the hospital is in Mohali. However, a basic Google search tells us that the headquarters of Fortis healthcare is situated in Gurugram.
The bottom of the letter mentions, however, the address of the Mumbai office of Fortis Hospital & Healthcare Limited.
The logo of the Mohali centre can be found on a website that reports about healthcare services.
The option to know more about the hospital in the letter directs the user to its Wikipedia page – which is a crowd-sourced platform – instead of an in-house profile of the healthcare service.
Further, Chadda was able to tell on the phone call a serial number mentioned in the letter to the IBT reporter. This number should be unique and ideally personal. As the letter was not directly received by the reporter but found on a social networking platform, Chadda's statement suggests that there are multiple letters with the same serial number.
The job profiles mentioned in the letter include Manager and operation manager, Family Dentist, Nurse Practitioner, Civil Engineer Construction, Data Analyst and around 85 other positions. "Many more Positions related To resume in Respective Department & Industry and we have just mentioned here some of the job profile because it is not possible to write Down the all Of job profile on the file (sic)," the letter mentions.
The total number of vacancies listed is 440.
Hospital's response
Responding to IBT's query, Fortis Healthcare Limited has said the letter has no relation with the hospital. "It has come to our notice that a fraudulent job advertisement is doing rounds on the social media. Please be informed that this is a fake ad & has no relation to Fortis Healthcare or its group companies, whatsoever," the hospital said.
The company added that appropriate action in the regard is being taken.
