Resume Verification - Don’t Be Fooled By A Smooth Talker

It’s a well known fact that some people lie on their resumes. There are plenty of statistics around that show the percentages. Some people embellish a little, some embellish a lot, and some outright lie. Most of the time, that lie is about their education. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, one in four candidates misrepresents his or her educational attainment. If someone lies on their resume, how can you trust them as an employee?

I can remember several years ago a company I was working for at the time was in the process of hiring a new sales director. The frontrunner appeared to be a polished professional with a great resume, which indicated that he had a Bachelors degree from a known university. However, during our background screening process, we could not verify his education. We decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and asked him if there was an issue we needed to know about. He gave us some kind of random excuse - something about a mix up of his records - and insisted that he did have the degree and would bring it to us for our files. Now, he knew full well that we were conducting a thorough background check on him and would eventually find out if he was lying, but he seemed sincere and all his other credentials seemed right for the job. So we hired him with the contingency that he would bring us a copy of his degree. Over the next several months he was asked to bring in his degree and he always had an excuse. His ultimate excuse was that it was in storage in his mother’s attic (I’m not making this up) in a town that was about an hour away from his home. Of course, by now, we all suspected that maybe he really didn’t have a degree at all. We finally pinned him down to a date to produce the degree or he would be let go. He insisted in an agitated manner that on Monday he would have the degree for us as he stormed out of the office on a Friday afternoon. Well, on Monday, he came in and announced that he drove to his mother’s house over the weekend and found his degree (which he never produced for us to see) and then promptly quit!

The moral of this story is that you can never tell who will lie on his or her resume. Here was a guy who was well dressed, well spoken and well experienced in the field we were hiring for. He was very straightforward when describing his education and degree and, all the while, he was lying. But he had such a charismatic personality (always a plus for a sales director) that we decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Then, as we tried to verify his education, he put us on the defensive that it must be something we did wrong because he certainly had that degree (in his mom’s attic). And when he was finally “cornered” he quit in a huff because he could not work for a company that did not believe him! All the while, never producing the degree.

In March 2010, NBC Miami reported that the chief information technology security director of Miami’s largest healthcare provider, Jackson Health Systems, lied on his resume about his college degree. He was hired for a $133,000 a year job that he wasn't qualified to have. He also receives an annual $5,000 bonus for being part of the management team. In the meantime, Jackson Health Systems is on the verge of going under.

Stories like these are plentiful. That is why your HR department must thoroughly vet every applicant. In the current economic environment with so many people out of work, it is more important than ever to conduct credential verifications. In desperate times some people will do desperate things – like lying on their resumes.

Fake diplomas are also used to misrepresent an applicant’s educational attainment. A quick Google search produces several online diploma mills that are happy to provide the “highest quality custom replicated diplomas” from any learning institution. The selling companies, which usually hide behind anonymous offshore Web addresses, are part of a growing number of Internet sites where people can buy phony credentials from real schools, including Harvard University. You can even hire a service that claims it will verify a fake degree.

The ramifications of hiring someone who has lied on his or her resume are many. Your company has allocated time and money to hire this applicant and potentially rejected a candidate that was truly qualified for the position. Bad hires also increase employee turnover, which is costly to a company. But most importantly, without verifying the applicant’s credentials, you risk hiring someone who is not truly qualified for the job, which can ultimately jeopardize your relationship with clients and hurt your bottom line.

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Comment by Maureen Sharib on June 10, 2010 at 7:08am: Look out for this smooth talker.

Comment by Doreen Koronios on June 10, 2010 at 11:12am: Wow Maureen. Now that's a smooth talker. I'm surprised that none of the investors throughout the years did any due diligence on this guy and his companies. My company has a division that handles due diligence investigations and we find information on people like Mr. Surry all the time for our clients. Con men like him can run, but they can't hide forever. A little due diligence "homework" would have gone a long way in this case.

Comment by Ian R McAllister on June 10, 2010 at 11:34am: Lets be honest, we have all come across it, and probably always will. I think that those who apply for jobs when they don't have the required qualifications or experiences, but don't try to hide it, are the most honest: they like the rest of us are ambitious!

There is nothing wrong with ambition, it just needs to be tempered with some honesty. Most don't do that, so end up lying.

Comment by Doreen Koronios on June 10, 2010 at 12:10pm: You're absolutely right, Ian. Lying on resumes happens all the time. However, it depends on the degree of the lie. If I'm "embellishing" about a skill I really don't have maybe I know that I'm a quick learner and can pick it up with some research and a little help. However, lying about a degree or a criminal past that I know will come up in a background check speaks to my character.

Comment by Ian R McAllister on June 10, 2010 at 1:32pm: Good points Doreen! As a the founder of a recruiter group who started to help job applicants by providing CV services (and yes, I know there are difference here between UK/EU and North America), most CV's I review as a recruiter could technically be found to have a lie in them: a title rearrangement here, a responsibility there, etc.

Sitting on the other side of the house, I actually find when I delve down in someone's work history to write them a CV, they have forgotten most of the good stuff they ever did and could put in a job application! Hence, they end up lying to fill out a CV, when in actual fact the problem should come down trying to pare stuff out so that it doesn't get too long.

Is the CV/resume lye therefore a function of a candidates dwindling memory versus their ambition? Its certainly more psychological in analysis for most, who don't want to lie and would consider a title tweak as such?

Comment by Bill Ward on June 10, 2010 at 1:57pm: The smoother they are, the more likely accomplishments are embellished. Thorough reference checking with people the candidate has worked with/for, but has not provided as a reference is who you call. Why would a company rely on the candidate to produce the degree? You either hire a reputable firm to handle this or simply call the registrar's office at the University they claim to have attended and verify the year of graduation and major. Simple...takes no time at all. This was a situation that was handled poorly by the company all the way around. Whether or not the candidate lied is immaterial. The company's hiring process was flawed and it came back to bite them.

Comment by Doreen Koronios on June 10, 2010 at 2:02pm: Hi Bill, I know that the company used a third party CRA that went directly to the University for the degree and was told that none existed. When HR went back to the employee, he insisted that he did have a degree from the University and there must be some type of mix up. HR then asked him to produce the degree if he indeed had one. I think he thought he could talk his way out of the situation, but it didn't work out for him. I think, in this case, his lying came back to bite him.

Comment by Bill Ward on June 10, 2010 at 4:46pm: The point is that your former company did exactly what you suggest Doreen; verify the degree. Unfortunately they did so AFTER hiring this individual. Depending on how long he was there, it cost the organization time and money. The moral to this story is don't extend an offer until all of the information provided by a candidate is verified. Then everybody's keister remains in one piece.

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