Hires and Liars, It’s Truth or Consequences for Job Seekers Who Fib on Their Resume
A resume is a modest document - a dry, page-long summary of achievements that, while failing to capture what writer Richard Price calls “the wonder of me,” makes a serviceable introduction between job seeker and job giver.
And according to many experts, it’s more often than not a steaming pile of bovine feces filled with fraudulent academic credentials, mysterious omissions and wildly embellished job descriptions.
“When some people start dreaming up resumes, they go into an almost novelistic mode,” says Michael Hershman, president of the risk-management firm the Fairfax Group, who cites studies that say fully 70 percent of resumes include a “major misstatement of fact.”
“I think there’s a lot of fraud, personally,” agrees Dorothea Gaulden, a former executive and author of the business ethics tome “Right Makes Might.” “Fraud is everywhere.”
Paul Viollis, the CEO of Risk Control Strategies, a Manhattan security screener for high-end clients, estimates conservatively that six of 10 resumes include “exaggerated or blatantly fraudulent” information. Other experts put the number between 10 and 20 percent.
Some claim resume fraud is on the rise - while others disagree, all concur that people are getting nabbed more often, due to a steep rise in background checks.
And even if claiming a Harvard degree when you actually flunked out of CUNY gets you in the door, misrepresentations can come back to haunt their perpetrators. That’s been demonstrated by a number of recent incidents, which experts say have caused employers to look at resumes more closely.
Former MIT Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones resigned in April after an anonymous source tipped off her egghead associates that she’d fabricated academic degrees when applying for her first job at the university in 1979.
Last year, Radio Shack CEO David Edmondson switched off his career at the electronic retail giant after press reports that he’d fudged information about academic degrees he didn’t receive. Ditto football coach George O’Leary , who was hired and then fired by Notre Dame, for citing phony academic credentials.
The most common misrepresentations are academic degrees, previous salaries and haziness about gaps in employment, says Jason Morris, COO of employeescreenIQ, though he adds that some misrepresentations are honest mistakes or miscommunications.
By: Brian Moore
Source: http://www.employeescreen.com/blog/2007/12/hires-and-liars-employeescreeniq-quoted.html