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The Vetted Workplace
Real hiring mistakes. Real red flags. Real fixes.
A candidate wanted a number. Not a role — a number. And he'd brought paperwork to justify it.
The Case
A company was finalizing an offer for a mid-level hire. Standard practice: match the raise expectation to the candidate's current compensation, verified against their most recent offer letter. The candidate's letter showed a healthy salary — high enough that the new offer had to stretch to match it.
The letter was forged. Verification traced it back to the source and found the real number — the candidate's actual prior salary had been inflated by up to 70%. The "proof" wasn't evidence of value. It was leverage, printed on a letterhead.
Had the offer gone out at the requested number, the company would have overpaid — not by a small margin, but by over ₹17 lakh across the hire's expected tenure and downstream compensation benchmarking for the role.
The Red Flags
- A "current salary" that sat noticeably above the market band for the role and experience level
- An offer letter used as the sole evidence of prior compensation, with no independent confirmation
- No cross-check with the previous employer or payroll-linked records
- Reluctance or vagueness when asked for additional proof of the claimed number
- A negotiation anchored entirely on a document, not on demonstrated scope or output
The Fix
An offer letter is easy to produce and easy to forge — it's a formatted document, not a verified fact. What actually confirms prior compensation is checking it against independent, harder-to-fake sources: payslip cross-verification, employer confirmation, or payroll-linked records, rather than taking the candidate's paperwork at face value.
This is precisely the kind of check a structured verification partner like Millow.io runs before an offer is finalized — catching inflated numbers before they become the baseline for a signed offer.
If a salary claim is the entire basis for a negotiation, verify the claim before you negotiate — not after you've signed.
Ever had a candidate's "current salary" not quite add up? Reply and tell us — always looking for the next case.
The Vetted Workplace
Every Wednesday. One real case. One real fix.
Written by the team at Millow.io — see what a background check catches before you make your next hire.
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