Deception in Selection - CV lies

It is not unusual at all for a job applicant to blag their way in an interview hoping that they will eventually learn the ropes and not get cought. Sometimes it works, other times it can blow up in their face. Below is an interesting article from the Guardian which highlights how an employer can get cought out if their referencing process is not up to scratch...

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guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 June 2009 10.37
by Harriet Marsh

Nick is a teacher at an English language school in Tokyo. Nick is also deceiving his employers. On his arrival in Japan eight years ago he obtained what he expected to be a temporary job teaching English by claiming he had a degree from Oxford University. He backed up the claim with a false degree certificate obtained in Bangkok.

In reality Nick has one A level and no degree. He fabricated a university career because he felt that it would dramatically increase his chances of employment. He was right and Nick has no plans to return to the UK. Backed by his bogus qualification he is now, after eight years, the longest serving foreign teacher in his school.

Yet he admits it can be hard to live the lie. "Several years ago the school hand-picked me to accompany a group of students to Oxford on the basis that I knew the city well because I had spent three years studying there. In reality I had been there once for the weekend to visit some friends. Yet I had to maintain the charade: to come clean now would be unthinkable," he says.

Getting a job can be highly stressful and candidates feel pressure to enhance their achievements to present themselves in the most favourable light.

In their book Deception in Selection, Liz Walley and Mike Smith suggest that, in such circumstances, people are pushed to deception in the belief that "everyone else is doing it".

Certainly lying on CVs is on the increase. Surveys suggest as many as a quarter of job seekers deviate from the truth on their CV. The common distortions include bogus or exaggerated qualifications, changing the dates of employment to hide career gaps and exaggerating the pay received in a previous job.

Every job-hunter faces the challenge of presenting their qualifications and past experience with as positive a gloss as possible. So just where does harmless exaggeration end and outright deception begin? It is a difficult question to answer, just as it is hard to define what are company perks and what is simple theft.

While exaggeration is widespread and generally accepted, it is unwise to resort to outright lies. This is not merely moral advice, it is also expedient. Outright lies such as qualifications or invented jobs will work against you.

At best, the cost of lying to future employers is the embarrassment of being found out. At worst, it can cost you the job. Under the terms of the contract of employment, prospective employees are required to tell the truth.

A CV acts as a personal history form and if a job offer is made on the basis of information contained in a CV that the employer believes to be correct, then the employer is legally entitled to withdraw the job offer if they discover the CV contains false information.

Take the example of a young man recently employed by a major household goods manufacturing company, who discovered this the hard way.

He joined the company claiming his previous salary to be 25% higher than it actually was. Yet when the payroll system processed the tax details from his former employer the deceit was uncovered. Four hours after arriving at his desk he was marched from the building.

In Deception in Selection, Walley and Smith put forward the theory that job candidates often fabricate an element of their CV in the belief that it will only be a short-term measure. Yet, if not discovered early on, they find it hard to turn back the clock and escape their deception.

CV Liers can get prison time

It is not unusual for job applicants to turn their CV into a document of complete fiction. What most of them don't realise is that this little bit of marketing chicanery is a criminal offense that can land them in pretty hot water. Most recently a senior NHS manager was given a criminal record for lying on his CV. The article below was originally published in personneltoday.com. Read on...
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Suspended sentence for NHS manager who lied on his CV
Louisa Peacock 22 March 2010 16:18


A senior NHS manager who lied on his CV has been given a 12-month suspended prison sentence and told to carry out 200 hours of unpaid community work.

Hasan Tahsin, former head of estates and capital projects at Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust, made fraudulent claims about his qualifications and memberships of professional bodies when he applied to several posts at five NHS trusts between March 2004 and March 2009. The skills required, including project management and estates management, were essential for each position.

Tahsin was discovered following an audit of senior managers' qualifications for the trust. He was arrested and interviewed by the NHS Counter-Fraud Service in May 2009, when he admitted he had lied to get the jobs - which fraudulently earned him £245,246 during five years.

Tahsin, 54, of Chadwell Heath in Romford, Essex, held responsible positions within the NHS dating back to 1990.

Investigating officer Alan McGill, of the NHS Counter-Fraud Service, said: "It is regrettable that Tahsin managed to secure senior management posts within the NHS for so long. Such deceptions are the exception and the vast majority of NHS staff are of high integrity.

"This case demonstrates that when suspicions of fraud are brought to the attention of the NHS Counter-Fraud Service, we will thoroughly investigate and, where fraud is found, will seek to prosecute."

The case follows that of senior NHS HR manager Kerrie Devine, of Lympstone, Devon, who lied on her CV by claiming she held a degree in HR management and was part way through a CIPD course. Devine was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay £9,600 in compensation.

Graduates are stretching the truth to get work in uncertain economic times

Powerchex has released their annual survey into CV discrepancies. Here is how it was reported in the Guardian:
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Under-21s told 29% more lies on job applications this year than last

Jessica Shepherd
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 August 2009 15.47 BST

More under-21-year-olds in the UK are lying on their CVs this year compared with last, a poll has found.
Of 4,735 job applications from all age groups sent to finance firms between June last year and this May, 899contained false information.Powerchex, a company which screens CVs and application forms on behalf of finance companies, found that of the 307 belonging to under-21s, 18% contained lies, an increase of 29% from last year, when only 14% of forms contained false information.
Under-21s are now the most likely to lie on job forms, the company says. Their most common lie was to claim a 2:1 university degree when they had been awarded a 2:2.
Others exaggerated menial jobs to make themselves sound more important. Another common lie was to claim they had left a job because their contract had expired rather than because they had been made to leave.
This year's final-year university students face the highest levels of graduate unemployment in a generation.
Alexandra Kelly, managing director of Powerchex, said: "The pressure of the recession on job markets seems to have led more applicants to believe that they should lie or make embellished claims to get jobs."

Research finds that Linkedin profiles are more accurate than CVs

Candidates are often more honest in their LinkedIn profiles than in the CVs they send employers. At least that’s what LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said at the Social Recruiting Summit held recently at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA. I suppose that this makes quite a bit of sense, if you consider that a LinkedIn profile can been seen by thousands of people who know the applicant and can expose any lies or exaggerations.

HR and screening staff should always look at discrepancies between CVs and online claims, but in addition they should also look at discrepancies between an applicant's CV and what they state on their screening/application form. We have found cases where the screening form was accurate and truthful, but did not bare any semblance with the CV on the basis of which the applicant was interviewed and made an offer.

What are the most common CV lies?

According to Les Rosen, author of the Safe Hiring Manual and founder of the NAPBS (National Association of Professional Background Screeners), the six most common fabrications from job applicants are:

Claiming a degree not earned: Yes, believe it or not, applicants will make up a degree. Sometimes, they actually went to the school but never graduated. Some applicants may have had just a few credits to go, and decided to award themselves the degree anyway. On some occasions, an applicant will claim a degree from a school they did not even attend. The best practice for an employer is to state clearly on the application form that the applicant should list any school they want the employer to consider. In that way, if an applicant lies, the employer can act on the lack of truthfulness regardless of whether the educational requirement is part of the job requirements.

Diploma Mills or Fake Degree: A related issue is diploma mills or fake degrees that can be purchased online. For those that actually attended classes, read books, wrote papers and took tests to earn a diploma, you apparently did it the old fashioned way. Now, getting a “degree” is as easy as going online and using your credit card. There are even websites that will print out very convincing, fake degrees from nearly any school in America. In fact, the author obtained a degree for his dog in Business Administration from the University of Arizona-and the dog had been dead for ten years. A transcript was even obtained and the dog got a “B” in English! Some sites will even provide a phone number so an employer can call and verify the fake degree. Some of the degree mills even have fake accreditation agencies with names similar to real accreditation bodies, in order to give a fake accreditation for a fake school.

Job Title: Another area of faking is the job description or job title. Applicants can easily give their career an artificial boost by “promoting” themselves to a supervisor position, even if they never managed anyone.

Dates of Employment: Another concern for employers is applicants that cover up dates of employment in order to hide “employment gaps.” For some applicants, it may be a seemingly innocent attempt to hide the fact that it has taken awhile to get a new job. In other cases, the date fabrication can be more sinister, such as a person that spent time in custody for a crime who may be trying to hide that fact.

Compensation: A related issue is pay – applicants have been known to exaggerate compensation in order to have a better negotiating position in the new job.

Lack of Criminal Record: Nearly every application will have a question about past criminal conduct. Although employers may not “automatically” eliminate a job applicant without a showing of a “business necessity,” if the person lies, then the employer would have grounds to deny employment based upon dishonesty.
The common denominator in all of these: they can be all be discovered by a program of pre-employment screening. To quote a phrase popular in the 1980s. “Trust, but verify.”

Don't they ever learn? More CV lies on the Apprentice

Lorraine Tighe has been caught out lying on her CV stating that's she has worked for a company longer than she actually did.

The Apprentice wannabe's lie is exposed on the show when she is grilled in an interview from Sir Alan Sugar's close business friends.

Karren Brady, the managing director of Birmingham City Football Club tells her: "If intuition is your gift, why didn't you use it to put your correct dates of employment down?

"You've overstated your length of time working in your current employment by 12 months, which is quite significant."

Claiming it was a "misprint", Tighe replies: "I suppose I have not fully succeeded in the way that I think I am capable of."

Brady adds: "So is that why you lied on your CV?"

Lorraine, looked puzzled and said, or it must have been a typo... Easy to see why this sort of answer can destroy an applicant's professional credibility, what is not so easy, is to understand why she did it. She knew her CV would be scrutinized and she knew her references would be checked.

It is so common for people to think they can get away with it. For some reason, that we have yet to understand, applicants who know that they will be checked, keep on lying. In this difficult job market this can be career suicide, don't they see it?