Background Checks Will Catch Resume Cheats

Background checks have become an integral part of the pre-employment process at over 80% of American companies. A background check is relatively simple and, for most, somewhat painless. A candidate provides information via an application and/or a resume, signs a consent to be checked, gets a drug screen and waits.

Typical pre-employment checks review the following reports:

• Social Security Number Trace
• County Criminal Records
• Sex Offender Registry
• Employment Credit Report
• Driving Records
• Education & Employment Verification

To some this may appear to be invasive but it is employer’s responsibility to ensure a safe work environment for existing employee’s as well as new hires, and verify the information by the candidate is accurate and honest.

Honest?

According to research from the Society for Human Resource Managers  “53% of people lie on their résumé in some way” and continues to add, ”the education section of an application or résumé is the most likely to be fraudulent.”

During difficult economic times when jobs are scarce and competition high, the desire to embellish a resume is hard to quell. There is a significant difference between enhancing one’s job description or computer skills and claiming a four year college degree. Yet, some candidates will claim a degree without completing a program or conferring a degree believing that HR departments do not have the time to complete education verification. However, an increasing number of companies are adopting post-hire screening programs as part of an annual review process. In 2006 the CEO at Radio Shack resigned because he got caught lying on his resume and a post-hire background check caught it.

Complicating the issue of resume cheats are increasing numbers of diploma mills.

Wikipedia’s entry on diploma mills is as follows:

… an organization that awards academic degrees and diplomas with substandard or no academic study and without recognition by official educational accrediting bodies. The purchaser can then claim to hold an academic degree, and the organization is motivated by making a profit. These degrees are often awarded based on vaguely construed life experience. Some such organizations claim accreditation by non-recognized/unapproved accrediting bodies set up for the purposes of providing a veneer of authenticity. Some degree mills have slipped through the (CHEA) government regulated education system due to lack of funding and/or proper house and congregational monitoring.

A list of diploma mills can be found here and clearinghouse for accredited colleges and universities can be found here http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/Search.aspx. The list of diploma mills grows daily and will continue to do so as long as states such as California continue to have lax or non-existent enforcement programs.

Using ten dollar words to clean up the description of a crappy position and polishing it into something infinitely brighter is not at issue. Everyone knows it happens. But resume cheaters that claim positions or degrees they cannot legitimately claim will eventually be caught.

In a more recent article about Resume Cheats, Inc. Magazine disclosed some interesting facts.

“…employers said they’ve automatically dismissed candidates who submit a trumped up resume. Those that continued to consider these applicants said they seldom end up hiring them.”

“…resume liars tend to exaggerate the responsibilities of a previous job, followed by additional skills and inaccurate employment dates.”

“…By industry, hospitality, transportation and IT had the highest rates of bogus resumes, while the public sector had the lowest…”

Human Resources know you are out there. Skepticism is a finer trait of a hiring manager.