If I don't have a relieving letter from a job, should I exclude those years worked from my total experience?

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I started working as a software engineer for an MNC in India, right out of college. After working there for almost 2 years, I resigned and left the company without serving the notice period. I did not get any relieving letter or experience letter from the first company, even after paying the bond money.

I did this because I had financial issues, got a better offer and the new company wanted me to join immediately. The new company wanted to fill the vacancies urgently and did not insist on relieving letter or experience letter.

I have worked at this company for about 5 years now, and have recently received a job offer from another MNC. During the HR interview, I mentioned that I don't have the relieving letter from my first company.

The HR said that they cannot hire me if I mention the work experience from my first company in the application, because I do not have the relieving letter which would cause problems during background verification.

They agreed to hire me based on my 5 years experience with the current company, as against my total work experience of 7 years. In other words, they asked me to omit the years worked at my first job from the total work experience, so as to avoid causing any issues in background verification.

I have already made a big mistake by not serving the notice period, I don't want to get into any new trouble by omitting work experience. Could this action get me blacklisted in NASSCOM?

Please suggest how should I go about this?

manpreet 2 years ago

From my personal experiences people do not risk leaving without serving a notice period unless it is for a position served less than 1 year, ie which is short enough to be ignored in the resume.

In your case 2 years seems too small to be simply ignored, but I doubt it can compromise your new job as the HR has already decided to take you without it. Also since it being your initial career it would matter even less as years go on and you add miles to your career. So I would suggest to follow the guidelines of the HR Manager. I doubt it would matter as most firms give importance to the most recent profile and not the first. Your loss would be the pay-scale you can request as you now have less years of experience to show. And in case you decide to study for MBA in the future, yeah then too. I am not sure about NASSCOM, as depending on the field your new company may or may not be part of it. But I suppose you would not be leaving your firm unless you get the background check processed and your new contract signed. So if this one fails because of NASSCOM, you only can apply to firms outside it, or maybe outside INDIA.