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The Liar's List
It's long been understood that some job candidates willingly misrepresent themselves (read: lie) on their resumes in order to get a proverbial foot in the door. A new report by Irvine, Calif.-based background-screening firm HireRight recently listed the top five lies told by job candidates -- an illustrious list that includes the following professional prevarications: exaggerating dates of past employment, falsifying the degree or credential earned, inflating a previous salary or title, concealing a criminal record and hiding a drug habit. According to the report, as many as 34 percent of all resumes include discrepancies related to previous employment, which means candidates may be stretching the dates of a previous job in order to hide a long break in employment, or possibly even hide time they have spent behind bars. And there's a 20-percent discrepancy rate in education qualifications provided by candidates, according to the report. In addition to taking credit for graduating from a school where they may have only taken a class or two, candidates may be listing degrees from "diploma mills" as well. "The tightening economy and rising unemployment rate increases competition for fewer jobs," says Glen Schrank, president and CEO of HireRight. "This adds pressure on job seekers to compete more aggressively and often baits them to embellish their credentials to try to appear more attractive to the employer." He says the Internet has helped job seekers get "much more sophisticated" in their efforts to beat the employment-screening system, so companies must use a screening program designed specifically "to identify and weed out any unscrupulous candidates." Mark Mehler, co-founder of CareerXRoads, a Kendall Park, N.J.-based staffing-strategy consulting firm, says candidates may be more likely to be selective in what they choose to put on their resumes as the job market continues to tighten. "What people are going to do is leave things off in the hope that the employer will not pick up on it," he says. "The [hiring manager] will then have to pick up on whether it's a falsehood or not." He says hiring managers "need to better understand applicant-tracking systems and the techniques that job seekers use to get their resumes to the top" So, how can hiring managers avoid hiring a liar? "It's an art, but you have to learn how to look for gaps and things that don't make sense," says Mehler. "Hiring managers get too enamored with the first three paragraphs and the names of the big companies that people have worked for."
Michael O'Brien can be e-mailed at mobrien@lrp.com.
April 1, 2009 Copyright 2009© LRP Publications |
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