Want a job? Get your handwriting right

The next time you apply for a job and are asked to submit a handwritten resume, beware. Your prospective employer may not only be interested in your professional pedigree, but also in what goes on in your mind.

In recent months, an increasing number of corporates, banks and even the police have been seeking the help of graphologists and signature experts to judge prospective employees, clients or criminals, particularly the white-collared ones.

Signature expert Manaklal Agarwal says that a person's signature mirrors his mind. "Every stroke, line, dots, dashes, curves, angle and inclination in a signature speak volumes about the signatory," Agarwal reveals.

After nearly 15 years of research and analysing over 8,000 signatures, Agarwal has identified as many as 470 properties based on 117 basic traits of signatures. "For instance, the letters g, j and y can be written in 9,000 different styles; there are 900 ways in which people underline their signatures," he says. Letters convey different meanings - g relates to libidinal properties, j speaks about relationships and y is all about money, he adds.

Another leading graphologist Devendra Javerian goes a step further. Apart from analysing personality traits, Javerian claims that it is possible to even predict whether the person will be afflicted by certain diseases. Javerian is a career counsellor, but with a difference, to students of almost all Mumbai colleges.

"I analyse individual students' handwriting to advise them on the best career options. I say with some satisfaction that I may have erred in my advice in only about 1% of cases," he claims. Scores of letters from students and college authorities bear testimony to Javerian's expertise.

An area of specialisation for him is investigating frauds. A Hong Kong-based company could detect an employee indulging in a massive fraud after Javerian studied her handwriting samples. Lecturing at the Sir Sorabji Pochkhanawala Bankers' Training College, he tells bank executives how to detect potentially fraudulent customers with the help of signatures and prevent bank scams.

Raj Deep Mishra, 37, has been studying and analysing signatures since the age of 15. "I combine graphology with astrology and vaastu-shastra and the results are amazing," he says.

Having analysed nearly three lakh signatures, Mishra merely glances at one before decoding the candidate's personality.

He has penned his rich experiences in a best-selling Hindi book Hastakshar Bolte Hain. Constantly innovating, Mishra is now attempting to associate graphology with mundane aspects like a person's food habits, shoes, facial reading and skin complexion, and use of ink and the type of pen used by the signatory.