Case Studies

Beware of CV lies

by Mark Rowe

Be vigilant when recruiting new staff as the number of people being inaccurate or telling lies on their CVs, and the sophistication of the lies they are telling, reaches new heights. That’s according to a risk management consultancy that provides staff screening. Analysis of 3,000 CVs by employee screeners at The Risk Advisory Group has found that though we reveal more about ourselves online than ever, well over half, 63pc of CVs contain discrepancies – a rise of 15pc in the last decade.

See also pages 30 and 32 of the March print issue of Professional Security magazine.

Although men and women were equally likely to lie on their CV, it seems that 25 to 32 year olds are the worst offenders. A third, 35pc of discrepancies came from this age group, suggesting that the ambition of ‘Gen Y’ may be driving them to bend the truth, the firm suggests. A quarter, 26pc of all the CVs analysed contained mistakes relating to academic background, with 35pc containing discrepancies about employment history. The analysis also identified a growing trend for candidates to embellish their job positions, with 12pc inflating their job titles in an attempt to climb the career ladder and many replacing words such as ‘graduate’ or ‘intern’ with ‘manager’ or ‘supervisor’.

Candidates have not just been economical with the truth but continue to fabricate entire stories, to get ahead or hide an unsavoury past, the risk consultancy says. Examples include:

A senior compliance applicant creating a fictional employment history to cover up a past misdemeanour involving time served in prison for stealing client money

A candidate building a website for a fictional school and arranging for a virtual office to answer calls acting as the school, all to create an inflated academic background in a desperate bid to secure a work experience placement with a leading bank

A candidate creating a work history overseas to cover up the time he spent in prison for drug offences

Candidates forging degree certificates

Candidates presenting degrees from bogus universities in India, Pakistan and, increasingly, the UAE

Michael Whittington, Head of Employee Screening at The Risk Advisory Group, says, “In today’s digital world we share more information about ourselves online than ever before – yet our analysis shows that this is not stopping people being economical with the truth when they are hunting for jobs. And recruiting from an increasingly global talent pool just exacerbates the problem by making it even more difficult to get the information you need to verify a candidate’s background, with a lot of data not readily available.

“Making a bad hire can be a costly mistake for any business. According to estimates from The CIPD, recruiting the wrong person can be as much as £12,000 for senior managers or directors. It also wastes time and can be damaging to the business’ reputation. That’s why we urge companies to balance the need to hire quickly with the need to validate the credentials of who they are hiring. Too much automation in the employee screening process can mean that critical details and discrepancies are missed. There really is no substitute for human insight and analysis to check that candidates’ CVs match the reality.”

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