The Avanti Group
The Avanti Group LLC Recruiting & Leadership Resume fraud said on the rise
The Avanti Group LLC Recruiting & Leadership Resume fraud said on the rise
Caveat emptor — let the buyer beware — and if it sounds too good to be true it probably is, are two sayings potential employers should bear in mind when vetting hires, researchers warn.
The tightening job market has more people either outright lying on resumes or writing their resumes in ways that polish the apple to stellar levels, they say.
“People create fraudulent resumes all the time,” said Randy Miller, a vice president with Career Adventures in Shreveport. He’s been doing human resources work since 1990 and has been in his capacity with Career Adventures 14 years. “It has been an issue, though we’ve probably seen more of it in the last five years.”
“We tell them not to do that because once they get employed or even before they are employed, everyone does background checks,” Miller said, noting that he tells clients to look at all their job history “to make sure their dates line up, that they actually worked where they say they worked. Put your real experience on there. They’ll learn if you’re lying.”
Karen Baronet is a professional placement specialist with Jean Simpson Personnel Services, which has operated locally more than 40 years.
“When we have done education verification we have found there have been cases of people claiming to have a degree from a certain college or have a certain GPA and find out that it’s not,” she said. “We've had people embellish on their resume and discovered that. We've had people list a longer length of time as employed with a company than they actually were.”
Trend investigator Jeff Crilley noted research on a blog with the compelling name Earsucker, performed research and validated claims that four of every five resumes contain errors, intentional or otherwise.
“It caught my eye,” Crilley said. “Can these numbers be right? Four out of five resumes are inaccurate? That’s a big number.
“For some, it’s a case of little seemingly innocent lies, a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to the job search. For others, it becomes a borderline criminal attempt to defraud.”
The Avanti Group LLC Recruiting & Leadership Resume fraud said on the rise