CV fraud: It’s everywhere and it’s damaging

Pop quiz: how inflated is your resume, on a scale of one to 10? That is, how far have you stretched your credentials to get that job?

We’ve all experienced dodgy resumes or curricula vitae (CVs) in varying degrees.

Perhaps a previous job’s start date was fudged to improve employment history. Or a past job title was boosted and you took more credit for work achievements than warranted.

Perhaps you included an unfinished degree, lied about your personal interests or lowered your age because you were too senior for the role.

Worse, you left out roles where you were fired after six months and stretched dates of other jobs to cover the gap.

For all of technology’s benefits, too many overstated CVs in business still get through.

CV fraud is an underappreciated issue. As technology disrupts industry, companies must be agile and able to change direction quickly. The ability to recruit good staff in a fast-moving business landscape is a critical competitive advantage

The digital economy and growth in the ‘‘gig economy’’, where staff are hired on a project basis, implies people being hired and fired faster than ever. That means more CV and reference checks – a skill that is lagging.

CV checking services, and technology that matches staff to the jobs, are helpful. But too much unverified CV garbage is still fed into job-selection processes.

Many companies do not have resources to verify CVs, so outsource it to external providers who skim over the process.

I am always surprised at the flimsiness of referee checks.

As a former editor, I am occasionally asked by previous staff to be their CV referee. Typically, a young recruitment consultant will ask a few leading questions that push the person into the role. That’s scant probing of the candidate’s strengths, weakness or role suitability via a rushed three-minute phone call.

In my time in business, I cannot recall a CV for any employee being challenged or audited – until something goes wrong. Similarly, I cannot think of a client or supplier verifying a CV before providing work, or their auditor ever challenging the document’s detail. Or a recruitment firm being penalised or sued for poor CV vetting or sloppy referee checking.

We delve deeply into CVs only when a serious problem emerges, exposing the organisation to horrendous reputational and financial risks.

Three system shortcomings should be addressed. The first is the onus to validate CVs being too weighted towards employers. The CV is essentially a marketing document, yet there’s not enough requirement on jobseekers to ensure the CV has no false or misleading claims.

In addition to companies checking resumes, jobseekers should be required to verify their CV independently, at least for important roles, before its submission.

A savvy entrepreneur should launch a start-up that charges job candidates a small fee to validate their CV. A jobseeker-organised, audited CV would help them stand out in a crowded labour market and signal their integrity. It would give employers extra comfort in the job-selection process and help reduce their costs.

The second shortcoming is internal policy and processes for CV checking. Too often, CVs gather dust in corporate files. Nobody remembers or revisits the CV when the job is filled, and the employee has years of work history.

The third shortcoming is incentives. There’s not enough personal risk for stretching the truth or including blatant lies, in CVs.

My guess is your firm has never made an example of a staff member who lied on their CV, particularly if they’re a top performer who got the job through an overcooked resume.

Incentives are too skewed towards employees. An exaggerated CV might get you the job. The chance of being caught is low. We tend to blame companies if bad CVs get through, and trivialise the fraud. We might even laugh about a little CV fudge here or there.

I’m not proposing a heavyhanded CV approach or police state on job selection. But a company looking for an ethical organisation culture needs to hire good people who do the right thing. Relying on self-penned marketing documents, often barely checked, is outdated and risky.

The best solution might be companies making employee CVs available for all staff to see. Sydney Morning Herald