Whether you are a business or a consulting firm, get what you’re actually paying for by avoiding the fakes, frauds, and cons with great looking resumes.
High salaries with few “entrance requirements” make SAP consulting a prime fraud target.
SAP implementations are crucial for competitive advantage in business. Parts of those competitive advantages are efficiencies, integration, and automation when properly implemented. To achieve these benefits, you entrust your business, your company, your enterprise, and your employees to a group of technology and business “gurus” believing these experts will help you achieve your goals.
In such a critical business endeavor you need the best software and the best consultants that money can buy. As a result, SAP and other ERP consultants have typically been some of the highest paid professionals in the technology sector. With one or two full implementations, about 2 to 4 years of experience, it is not difficult to get a full time position in industry or consulting, paying $80K to $100K, or even more. For a decent contractor, that amount can easily be double or more. The U.S. average salary for a doctor or lawyer is around the same amount as the full time position. However, unlike doctors and lawyers, there is no hard “entrance” requirement except claims of experience and the ability to get through the interview process. Remember also that these compensation levels are in the region of senior management or executive pay at many companies.
Because of the potential “goldmine,” SAP consulting is a target for cheats, cons, and liars. Worse yet, there’s an entire cottage industry set up to help write fake resumes, coach potential applicants, and even do initial phone screens to help these individuals “cheat” their way into their first real project.
Some actual experiences with fake SAP consultants and con artists
Having done SAP work since 1994, and being a project manager or team lead on many projects, I am often asked to screen potential candidates for SAP consulting work. I’ve certainly had some memorable experiences.
Real-life bait and switch – Make Sure the person you interview is the one that shows up for the job.
As a project manager for a mid-size national consulting firm, I got a request to screen a few potential candidates for an SD (Sales and Distribution) role. The client requirement was very specific, to handle some reasonably straightforward pricing condition setup work. The design was already done, and the requirements were already laid out, there was nothing complicated, no unusual requirements, really it was nothing special. I would have done it myself if I weren’t up to my eyeballs on another project.
I contacted the applicant and the phone screen went great! This candidate knew SD inside, outside, and upside down. Great communication skills, clear, straightforward, relaxed–, no struggling or fumbling for the answers. He pegged everything and it was very clear he had been working on SAP for many years, just as his resume said. He’d be starting at the client the following Monday as a contractor.
A week and a half after that Monday start date, I got a call from the project manager at the client site. The SD consultant was saying that everything they needed to do was going to require a programmer because what they wanted couldn’t be done with standard SAP. The SD consultant I thought I had interviewed got on the phone and his English was HORRIBLE! You could barely understand a word of what he said, worse yet, the little I could make out, this guy was totally clueless. He didn’t even know how to do the simplest pricing related setup (using the SAP “condition technique”) and it was painfully obvious that this was NOT the same person I had screened on the phone. A similar thing happened again to someone else in our company, the “bait and switch” in SAP consulting is alive and well. While lots of people “pad” their resumes, there is a new breed of TOTAL CONS! Watch out for the con artists!
Lesson learned – ALWAYS screen a second time in person, with different questions. I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve done where it was obvious by the delays and the keyboard clicks in the background someone was doing an Internet search, or an SAP help search during the interview. During the second screening, make sure to have some fairly simple IMG task for the applicant to do. Then log into a development system and ask them to show you how to do “x.”
Beware the SAP consultant “fraud factories” – teaching them to lie, cheat, and steal – do you trust them with your company data?
At a moderately large client site as the team lead, I was working on SAP’s R3 / CRM Internet Sales B2B application. We needed a developer and it was a critical time in the project. Because the enhancements were significant, it *had* to be someone with real experience, not a blowhard. They needed ABAP, Java, and CRM or R3 Internet Sales experience. This candidate had to be able to deliver on a compressed timeline and this was a critical path item for the entire project. Because a significant portion of the company’s customer base was already using the web for all ordering processes, this was a mission critical, go or no go development effort.
In come the mountains of resumes. I probably did 30 or more technical screens, and please keep in mind, I’m a functional consultant without all of the coding skills, but I can usually find someone who has the experience necessary to get the job done.
I learned a LOT about the fraud, the cons, and the “games” out there around the “SAP consultant factories.”
During this long, painful screening process, there were probably 4 genuine candidates who had spoken to questions and requirements clearly, concisely, and explicitly enough that I was certain they had “been there and done that.” They were the real McCoy. Then the oddest thing happened, after some measure of assurance they were genuine, I followed my own suggestion from prior lessons learned and asked when they could come in for a second screening face to face. One consultant just simply said he couldn’t, no explanation, just refused. A second one tentatively agreed then called back a few days later and said he accepted another contract offer. The third one just never showed. At least one, probably two, and possibly all three were the classic “bait and switch.” They had someone else do the phone screen for them, and then they would show up with NO experience and potentially jeopardize the go-live date. And because of the mission critical nature at this client, they would potentially jeopardize the entire project.
One of the candidates (not among the 4 with real experience) I was given to screen was the most revealing candidate of all. I was handed a resume, with a LOT of the *identical* projects, descriptions, and timelines as many of the other resumes I saw. Except this one was different. This one had a project listed at a company where I knew literally everyone on the project team. I hadn’t worked on the client, but as the SAP Knowledge Manager for the consulting firm that has a great, long-term relationship with the client, I personally knew everyone on the project. Because of my position, I also knew many of the contractors that our firm used and this person’s name was not one I recognized.
This phone screen revealed the “SAP consultant fraud factory” to me in ways I’d never considered.
Since I knew the project manager at that client, and the technical lead, both of whom had been there for close to 3 years, I decided to ask a few key questions. In a rather friendly manner, when the candidate got on the phone, I asked him if he’d worked at that particular client before. Of course he replied he had. I then asked “So, how’s Jack doing there these days?” to which the candidate said he didn’t know any Jack. And I said, “Sure, you know, the project manager, how’s he doing?” Still he said he didn’t know a Jack and then said he worked in a technical area away from the rest of the project. So, I asked how was Sri doing? As a side note, Sri and I are personal friends who go back many years and have worked on several projects together. He is probably one of the most talented ABAP / Java / Portals / CRM / SAP gurus you can find anywhere. Still he insisted he didn’t know any Sri and that he worked in a different area. When I pressed and insisted that Sri had been there for several years, that he was the technical lead, and that I knew him personally, this candidate wouldn’t relent. Even after I told the candidate that I knew everyone on the project personally, and that Sri was responsible for all of the SAP related CRM and Portals development work, he still insisted he had the experience and had worked there but didn’t know Sri. Knowing he was lying (he had no way to know how well I knew the project participants), I called my old friend Sri on his cell phone, and did a three way call to get him on the phone. At this point the candidate finally admitted the truth…
He lied, he had some service out there put a fake resume together for him, with legitimate SAP projects (probably gleaned from SAP resumes out there today), and had gotten coaching on how to lie his way through the interview. This candidate actually had the bravado to ask if he could still come onto the project even though he had just admitted he lied about his experience and that his resume was a fake!
Lesson Learned – a resume is a piece of paper, just because it has all of those “cute” SAP terms and buzzwords on it doesn’t mean much. An SAP resume should only serve one purpose–, to consider whether or not to screen the individual. NEVER base a hiring or contract decision on a resume and a “personable” interview alone. Even if the interviewee comes across as knowledgeable and authoritative, remember my example above, this guy actually had the temerity to still ask for the job even after admitting to be a fraud!
How do you screen to find good SAP consultants?
At first this statement will sound counterintuitive, but let me make the statement first and then explain. The goal with every interview must be to qualify an applicant, not to disqualify them.
The following background is important because depending on how you screen, you may miss the absolutely best qualified, skilled, and experienced candidates and hire some of the worst.
Why current SAP screening methods miss good candidates and let the cons in.
SAP is so massive with so many industry specific solutions, that a good “con” can sound like they know what they are doing. A liar, with some coaching, or industry exposure, who has spent some time online doing a little research, can sound pretty convincing. In my screening experience, for technical consultants, I’d be lucky if 1 in 3 resumes are valid. For the functional consultants, it’s still less than half. The number of fakes, frauds, and cons trying to get into SAP to help design YOUR business solution is incredibly high. When considering the stakes to your business, and the overall expense of a full ERP implementation, the cost of those fakes is too high no matter how convincing they may be. If it means “eating” the expense of a few airline tickets for the second screening, then so be it. It is a cost that is well worth it to know for sure.
After almost 13 years of working with SAP, numerous full cycle, extensive scope projects with both SD and MM, and after exploring and configuring a substantial portion of the application in areas of SD, MM, LE, and some FI, I will be the FIRST to admit during an interview that there are some things that I have not done before. That list is getting smaller as the years go by, but I still learn new things on EVERY project. This in spite of the fact that I have received written accolades, formal recognition, and even client initiated bonuses as a contractor!
There’s one or two things I’ve learned along the way about screening applicants. One of those lessons is that different personalities and different communication abilities make it almost impossible to genuinely determine if someone, say someone like me, who has 13 years experience, actually HAS that much experience! However, the following screening method will enable you to determine if the applicant has real SAP experience, it just can’t be used to determine how much experience they may have.
Screening Rules for Finding Real SAP consultants
• YOUR GOAL IS TO QUALIFY AN SAP CANDIDATE! If a candidate can’t answer every question or deal with every issue it does not mean they don’t have experience. What you are looking for is a high comfort level within yourself that the candidate really does have SAP experience in the area you need. That does mean you really must check with their prior clients. If you go in with the perspective of disqualifying a candidate, you can always find something that wasn’t answered or dealt with to your satisfaction.
• Before you even decide to waste your time with a screening session, do an old-fashioned HR check with the prior companies. Many company’s HR departments will do a simple validation of contractors. Even if they don’t have direct records, they are more than willing to check with the project manager or others who might know. And most companies list an HR contact or hiring information contact online to send an e-mail to. What I do is copy the section of their resume related to that company, send it to the HR manager, and ask them if that person was in that role or had the listed responsibilities at their company. Basically I just want them to verify that the information is true. Here is a rule of thumb, if the resume lists companies in foreign countries, or organizations that there is no way to reasonably verify them then disqualify that experience from their resume. It is not that it should be necessarily considered fake, but it SHOULD BE COMPLETELY IGNORED as if it didn’t exist on their resume at all. It is a very common tactic to list several foreign SAP implementations which are completely fake.
• As an alternative to the HR check, or possibly in conjunction with that check, you may wish to ask the candidate for a specific contact who is STILL AT THE COMPANY they worked with. Even this has to be carefully verified. I’ve been given bogus phone numbers and e-mails that are not at the company being used for a reference. Be sure it is a legitimate phone number and e-mail address. Also try to verify that the internal company reference is the person they claim to be. I had one situation where an internal company reference was provided that was supposed to be the project manager, it turns out the individual was an ABAP programmer and a personal friend of the person trying to sneak the fake resume through.
• Look for “giveaways” that the person lacks the experience they say. If their resume shows 6 -10 years of experience and you have a very difficult time understanding them that’s a pretty significant red flag. After all, just exactly how did they participate in the numerous meetings and requirements gathering sessions? Just how did they handle writing a blueprint? How did they manage and work issues when they can hardly be understood? Even if they babble all of the “buzzwords” how did they work through business issues and actually transfer any useful knowledge if they “talk the talk” but it is not understandable or in plain, common terminology that everyone can understand? In other words, beware when during the interview, OR on the project when they try to “baffle you with feces.”
• Does their resume show they started SAP at 16 years old? I’ve also received resumes that show 8+ years experience in SAP and the person who showed up was in their early 20’s. That means they would have started doing SAP work at 16?? You get the picture. If the person is obviously in their early 20’s and they have 5 – 10 years of experience listed on their resume that’s a dead giveaway that they are a fake.
• Do your homework. Go online and find some of the resources for interview preparation. There are lots of sites and lots of SAP forums out there to “help” some of the cheats. AVOID those questions in your screening process. However, if you must use them, take the time to rephrase them so they make sense but do NOT use any “SAPspeak” terminology or any SAP specific phrases that they might have been “trained” on.
• Develop a specific screening script to use on the phone, and a separate one with different questions for the in person screen. Again, if possible, avoid “SAPspeak” in that script, and above all else, be careful to avoid questions that give the answer away. If a candidate has trouble understanding the question, carefully re-phrase it in such a way that doesn’t directly give the answer away. (EXAMPLES at the end).
• Establish key baselines for the interview, even if it is already stated on the resume. Be sure to quantify how much experience in time, number of implementations, or how many years before beginning any screening or questioning. Use these as baselines and note any avoidance of committing to an amount of time or number of implementations and explore the avoidance.
• Press for specifics, press for specifics, press for specifics, press for specifics. During the interview process, do not accept vague or evasive answers! If the candidate doesn’t know the answer, they should say they don’t know. Vague and evasive answers should generally be considered a red flag (although there are occasions that there may be a misunderstanding, so remember, the goal is to qualify, not to disqualify a candidate). Also, be careful if they “sound” like they might be answering the question but you really don’t know what they are saying. After all, if they really have the experience and are a qualified consultant they should be able to translate SAP speak into plain business language that anyone can understand. How else are they going to develop a blueprint, or write position papers, or resolve problems / issues so that they can be understood?
• Ask for details related to actual configuration settings. Someone may not remember the *exact* settings, but they should be able to speak to it in enough detail that an experienced consultant will leave you with some assurance they have been in those IMG settings before. Be careful not to “give the answer away” in the questioning process. So carefully craft your questions so that they are clear enough to understand the what you are trying to have them configure without using the specific terms that you see in the SAP IMG. Also be attuned to questions from the applicant that are seeking more understanding and those that are actually trying to get you to give them the “answer” that they can parrot back to you in a different way. There is no way that anyone, even after many years, is going to remember every value, or every setting of the thousands of possibilities from memory. What you’re looking for here is enough specifics to help you understand that they actually have done configuration before.
• Define a couple of business challenges or scenarios that you have either had to solve in the past, or that you are trying to solve now, and ask the candidate for specific ideas and methods for how to address the issue. With many things in SAP there are several methods or approaches to resolve the same issue, if you get the same answer that you have used in the past, great! If you don’t get the same answer, listen very carefully because you may learn a new and possibly better way of doing something from a real SAP consultant or you may discover that they are making it all up. (Remember, your goal is to QUALIFY the applicant, so what you’re looking for is genuine PROOF that they’ve “been there, done that” and have real SAP experience. Not that they arrived at the exact same solution that you did). Probing in this area, around issues you have already solved, or issues you are facing is a great way to find out if someone actually has the experience they claim. In a nutshell, can they solve your business problems or apply the correct SAP solutions to the issues you face?
• ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS be willing to have them come in for a second, face to face, technical screening with different questions. When you consider the amount of money you will be paying a month for this person’s services, some potentially lost air and cab fare is pretty cheap. After a good phone screen, to avoid some of the obvious cons, come right out and tell them that you will have them come in for a second face to face screen with different questions and that you will have them demonstrate some configuration tasks at that time, keep the tasks simple, but do not tell them what they are. Some of them will never show up and you can avoid the wasted time and expenses. If they show up, pay careful attention at how comfortable they are in finding the configuration locations and in navigating in the IMG. Consider it a red flag if they come in with an agenda of what they are going to show you, unless they can easily demonstrate the skills you request. That can be an indication that they got coaching to con you and are going to try to take you through their own “scripted” demonstration that some friend showed them.
• If you are a consulting firm who routinely recruits SAP talent, change up your questions and interview techniques at least a couple times a year. This will help to ensure that if the questions or other information is leaked, they will become obsolete by the time any significant circulation happens.
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Dear Bill, I have written the Critical Sucess factors in the wiki sometime ago because after 12 years experience on SAP i have learned from the adversity and good and bad experiences. I have been in both sides, as Consultant and as client. So let me insist on some of the questions that you make to find out the good consultant. 1) To find somebody that gives a different way to solve the same problem is nice to have. I will also agree on screening some IMG and see how the candidate will react, but you have to admit that even discovering a person with the IMG stamped on their brain, you will find a bad candidate. If you want a good question to make, just ask them WHY they propose this os that. And to answer that they must before understand what is the use of the provided solution they give. I mean that I insist on having consultants that they have the business skills and education as to understand the problem behind and propose a business solution rather than a SAP solution. What is this solution bringing to the performance of the business? I can tell you that some specific times we have decided to use a pencil and a notebook rather than a standard SAP solution, or worst ABAP.
Final question. 2) How can you presume to have the right candidate as you are asking to have a f.ex SAP MM Consultant with ABAP? Is this a joke? A MM Consultant should know among others about the full technics and strategy of purchasing, (which are not in a SAP manual). Are you still considering a SAP Consultant an IT guy? Don´t you think is an area more for organization and business understanding?
Do you drive a car by night without lights? The car and the engine works but….
3) Language skills. This is a funny topic. And it´s funny because when an english speaker with no idea of languages other than English tends to think that others have no idea about everything except him/her. Most of SAP implementation are international roll outs, and behind of many bad implemantations there is a problem of communication originated by somebody who tends to think that people with less skills in English are somehow brainless. A Good Team leader develops its communication skills, by making sure that the communication line is clearly understood. So don´t blame a candidate because their “poor” English, blame yourself for not being able to understand it´s capacity on SAP. Also, I always try to say hello, and some words in the local language, and make sure that any communication made is copied on a paper and distributed.
I am not saying I know everything, in fact the more I know of SAP and Finance the more I think that I have no idea. So as you I am always open to learn from anyone on any new project, and to admit the many thinks I don´t know after this 12 years.
Thank you.
Manel
[quote]
At a moderately large client site as the team lead, I was working on SAP’s R3 / CRM Internet Sales B2B application. We needed a developer and it was a critical time in the project. Because the enhancements were significant, it *had* to be someone with real experience, not a blowhard. They needed ABAP, Java, and CRM or R3 Internet Sales experience. This candidate had to be able to deliver on a compressed timeline and this was a critical path item for the entire project. Because a significant portion of the company’s customer base was already using the web for all ordering processes, this was a mission critical, go or no go development effort.
[/quote]
I think a big part of the issue is an unreasonable expectation for what a new hire can do. A ‘compressed timeline’ ‘critical path’ situation needs somebody already familiar with the specific project, and one you know from experience can handle this, namely somebody already on staff.
If there is nobody already aboard, the correct answer is ‘a new hire cannot do this’, and something will have to give in the project planning.
If you ask for something impossible, you won’t get anybody honest, they wouldn’t say they can do the impossible, and that leaves only liars.
And if management demands you do this anyways, they will get their deserved failure.
Putting some of this responsibility back on to SAP clients, they also need to take the time to publish their experience on their consultants on the ASUG consultant review database that only SAP clients have access to.