What are little white lies? They are small and harmless lies, not meant to hurt. However every little white lie is still a lie and it is still meant to mislead people. Similarly, not all resume lies are penned with malicious intent and it is likely that numerous job candidates would say they are simply exaggerating the truth and not lying. Many candidates feel the need to embellish their resumes to stand out from the pack.
The most common false claims are:
1. College degrees and job titles – Hiring someone who lacks necessary training or job experience can result in a poor hire and increased costs when you have to start over to find the ideal employee. Moreover, your employee’s poor performance or lack of required skills could cause your customers to lose confidence in your organization. The affect this has on your company’s reputation can be far greater than simply the time and money invested in the hire.
For example: Was your applicant really an experienced, national sales manager like he/she claims on her resume? Or was she a floor manager with only a few direct reports?
An advanced background check can help you confirm that the person you hire has the skills and knowledge to perform the job. Additionally, college degrees and professional credentials should be verified with the concerned institution.
2. Altered dates of employment – Lots of applicants lie about dates of employment to cover gaps in their work history. Perhaps they were fired from a job or a series of jobs, or maybe they’ve been job hopping too frequently. Women trying to reenter the workplace after starting or raising a family may stretch time lines to cover the months or years they weren’t employed.
A thorough background check will help you verify dates of employment so you can easily identify any gaps that may not have been obvious on the resume and that may warrant further investigation.
3. Inflation of previous salary – Previous salary is often used when determining compensation for a new employee. It’s natural to want to make as much money as possible, so lots of job applicants will inflate the figure on their resumes in the hopes of securing higher pay from a new job. While not all employers will give out salary information, many will confirm information that is provided to them as being correct or inaccurate.
At the end of the day, employees are investments. When you consider the time and expense you commit to hiring and on boarding new employees, the true worth of a background check is more than uncovering inaccuracies on resumes. The information helps you ascertain if a potential employee is likely to lie, steal from your company or hurt someone who works for you or pose potential harm to your clients or your reputation.
Why Validating Credentials is Important
While the day to day function of each employee in an organization differs, the common thread across all employees is that they are all hired to create shareholder value and serve customers. Hiring managers evaluate employees based on what value they believe the applicant will be able to add to the organization in the future. However, the data a hiring manager uses to make this assessment is predominantly what the applicant has accomplished in the past. If the applicant falsifies her past accomplishments, then the hiring manager is making a decision based on bad information.
Consider the following examples of C-suite executives and those with similar responsibilities caught lying on their resumes.
• Veritas Software CFO Ken Lonchar claimed to have an MBA from Stanford
• Bausch & Lomb CEO Ronald Zarella claimed to have an MBA from NYU
• SAC Capital trader Matthew Martoma omitted his expulsion from Harvard Law School for forging a transcript
• Walmart Stores Inc.’s chief spokesman David Tovar falsely claimed a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware
According to Career Builder, the following are the most common resume lies:
• Embellished skill set – 57 percent
• Embellished responsibilities – 55 percent
• Dates of employment – 42 percent
• Job title – 34 percent
• Academic degree – 33 percent
• Companies worked for – 26 percent
• Accolades/awards – 18 percent
Consider a likely situation where the hiring manager has three candidate resumes in front of him or her, all with the ‘right’ education credentials for the position. The statistics indicate that one of those three applicants really didn’t earn the degree he/she listed. One out of three! Would that change the hiring manager’s decision? I would hope so.
If a candidate is lying on her resume, what will she do if she gets the job? Personally, I wouldn’t want to risk my firm’s reputation to find out.
