“Technically, you could say that based on that reference they
had ticked all the boxes for that job and would progress through to the next stage, but because we were aware of a discrepancy and had been given a mobile phone number for the referee, we decided to do a bit more digging.” Jakobs called a Ranstad colleague in another state and asked
if they had heard of the manager named as a referee. The colleague said she had, so followed up with the manager on a landline... only to find out that they had never heard of the applicant. Obviously not expecting the recruitment agency to inves-
tigate, the candidate had apparently thought they could play the system. “Not many people of good character would want to put their
friends in a position where they had to falsify information,” says Jakobs. “People are only setting themselves up for great dam- age if they falsify their credentials.”
FOOLPROOF SYSTEMS Systems within the recruitment process used by Randstad, such as verbal reference checks and right-to-work checks, ensure that candidates who lie on their CV do not make it far. Not only does it erode the recruiter’s or employer’s trust in the
candidate, but it also puts pressure on the applicant to ensure their story stacks up. But if they do manage to get the job, the situa- tion becomes only worse as they constantly wait to be found out.
LITTLE WHITE LIES “There have been times when we’ve seen CVs that are mainly accurate, but where they might stretch the truth. It could be about the length of employment, the job title and responsibilities. Maybe they will say they were an executive assistant when in reality they might have been a receptionist administrator,” says Jakobs. Another example of common lies on CVs is inserting roles
amid the flow of other jobs, hoping the recruiter or potential employer will not go through the fine details but just focus on the headline job. Frog Recruitment (Australia) career agent manager Bron- wyn Stephens says there have been times when candidates “talked up” their roles, but this was usually picked up in the inter- view stage through questioning. “With an experienced recruiter it will become quite appar-
ent that you’re getting a story rather than a real-life example,” says Stephens. Common signs of candidates lying in an interview include
stumbling over words, making contradictory statements, unable to recall details if probed and physical signs of discomfort like blushing or umming and ahhing. “The candidate might make statements about what they have
done, but they have not actually done part of it. When you drill them down to the examples, of course they can’t give them because they weren’t privy to that information or they weren’t the decision maker. They may been involved in part of the process and not taken ownership of some of the things they listed.”
FRIEND OR FOE? While social media networks like LinkedIn have made it eas- ier to lift parts of the CVs of other people, equally it is easier to catch the culprits with an online search. “People have to be very aware about how visible they are with
an online profile. The world is a global village now and people need to be careful because they will get caught out,” Stephens warns. LinkedIn expert Jennifer Bishop of Content & Copy says it is easy to lie on a CV. People she had trusted have even lifted
People are only setting themselves up for great damage if they falsify
their credentials
her skills and responsibilities and transferred them to their own profiles. “LinkedIn is a great way of cross-referencing as you can check
their recommendations and verify the recommenders. In fact, in the US this is used as an app interface, weighting a recom- mendation based on the level of seniority of the recommendor,” says Bishop. “In Australia, an employer once had to check referees and do due diligence in other ways. On LinkedIn it’s easy to check the veracity of an applicant’s claims as you can see their first- and second-level connections. You don’t have to rely on three peo- ple you may not know, and you can check the referee’s profile.”
TRUST THE PROCESS Using online checks is one way employers and recruiters can match details between what a candidate says in their applica- tion and what their CV says. Employers with time pressures may go directly to an online recruitment tool, but still need to follow a watertight recruitment process. This can include re- visiting important roles and drilling down further into the applicant’s stated time there and responsibilities. “You tend to look for the best and you’re not going to
necessarily dig down deeply enough. It’s human behaviour to want to like someone in an interview; we don’t normally go into an interview thinking the worst of someone. You need to approach any sort of recruitment process with a level of strat- egy and you have to test your assumptions,” says Jakobs. “I’m not sure that everybody is thinking about that when
they’re recruiting, or are necessarily skilled or well-versed enough in those areas to actually test people when they’re sitting in front of them for an interview. That’s why things like verbal reference checks are critically important, because you can’t take every- thing on face value, such as endorsements on LinkedIn; you have to test and probe.” It pays to carefully check any differences between appli-
cations, CVs, what is said at interview and by referees, plus look beyond the candidate’s nervousness to any signs of obvious dis- comfort, and use these signs as reason to look further into state- ments that do not ring true. E
ISSUE THREE 2012 |
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