Lies on CVs break trust and could severely backfire

IT'S only human to want to stretch yourself into a better job. But it's not a good idea if it means stretching the truth on your CV.

The perils of doing so were only too apparent last week when former 115,000-a-year hospital chief executive Neil Taylor was given a suspended 12-month jail sentence and fined 5,000.

When he applied to be head of Shrewsbury & Telford NHS trust in 2003, his CV had claimed a first-class university degree but he was rumbled when he forged a certificate in response to a review of managers' qualifications. He had no choice but to resign, later admitting that he had only "one or two A levels".

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An extreme case, of course, and lesser exaggerations or little white lies by those with more modest ambitions will seldom end up in court. But the embarrassment and career-ruining shame of being exposed could hurt more than a jail sentence.

No fewer than one in four people lies on their CV, according to a report this month from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The institute said a quarter of employers surveyed had to withdraw at least one job offer, while others discovered too late that they had employed a liar not competent to do the job.

Indeed, some employees admitted making up more than half their career history, while the average job seeker confessed to telling three lies. But the chances of being caught and (at the least) fired are increasing by the day as CV-vetting agencies spring up at an astonishing rate.

This is in response to a growing alarm, in the wake of the Soham murders by caretaker Ian Huntley, about the rising number of public sector staff who lie about their qualifications or give false references.

The concern is acute not just in education and health services - where staff could be working with vulnerable adults or children - but in many exposed areas, such as airports, subject to a high level of security risk.

While Scotland has not yet been targeted by agencies directly focused on CV vetting, a check on Capital detective agencies reveals a flow of new business in that area, and in England the boss of six-year-old firm Link Personnel Screening says there are currently about 25 companies like his, compared with five only five years ago.

"It's a hugely growing business," says director David Lean, speaking from Hertfordshire, "because so many falsehoods have been told that have proved damaging and even led to legal action. When a doctor is not a doctor and a teacher is not a teacher, obviously the receiver of their services is not going to be happy when something goes seriously wrong.

"People have just been too relaxed about their CVs for too long, even in the smallest ways. Most don't see anything wrong, for instance, in closing up gaps - missing out jobs in which they didn't perform well.

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"Checks by employing companies have often been too lax in the past. But now, in certain sectors at least ( including security, medical, education, financial, airports) legislation is dictating that thorough checks have to be made.

"Much of the imperative is coming from litigation-conscious American firms with subsidiaries in this country."

Technology is being used increasingly to check out applicants' claims for minimal costs, and a firm called Verifile, based in Bedfordshire, claims to be at the forefront of that development.

For a registration fee of 100 and a separate smaller fee (from 6.92) for each case investigated, it will subject a submitted name to a number of checks, ranging from identity and financial through education and previous employment claims to criminal and driving records.

"There is definitely a sharply growing demand for our services," says director Ben Cohen, whose website reports that a recent survey of 1500 UK employers found 71 per cent had encountered lies on CVs. "Simply because it is now good business to screen everyone who comes in through the door, from the cleaner up to the most senior director, and especially temporary or part-time workers.

"Of course everyone wants a potential employer to see him or her in the best possible light, but lies or even exaggerations won't do it. We have seen people claiming first-class honours degrees from establishments that don't offer them, secretaries falsely claiming to have been commercial assistants or managers, and an Australian nurse working in Britain when - we discovered - she had studied but not qualified back home.

"Doing most of our work online, we can check out such anomalies very quickly and easily these days, so people should be very respectful of this relatively new culture.

"Until recently, many employers and even recruitment agencies felt they didn't have the time or know-how to check out people. But now they know we're here and that we can get things done very discreetly. We don't need to interrogate the candidate, so we can get results that would cost hundreds if you were using a detective agency."

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Needless to say, a detective agency would dispute that - and senior investigator Stephen Grant of Edinburgh's Grant & McMurtrie naturally feels it can be helpful to take a more physical approach when checking out people.

"We are getting a growing amount of business of this nature," he says, "especially from small to medium-sized Scottish companies or employers down south who are recruiting from Scotland. One reason that CV checking is getting outsourced is because of the sensitivities of the Data Protection Act, and we find that clients want us to go a little bit further these days than we have in the past.

"Obviously, we can check out databases and such like, but we also find considerable advantage in checking physically on people - confirming they live at the address they give, speaking discreetly to neighbours, finding that when the applicant claims to have 'taken a year out' that the dates actually tie in with a jail sentence."

What it comes down to is making sure your CV is strictly accurate before it is submitted, and perhaps it is then advisable to use an expert - such as Alan Forrester of Edinburgh's CVWrite agency.

"I deal with every level of CV, from plumbers to pilots," says the former practitioner of nuclear medicine who started the business when he was made redundant five years ago. "A lot of my previous work featured technical writing, so I thought I might be good at the precision required for compiling CVs.

"Obviously, you have to pitch them appropriately. It's not such a good idea to suggest that a 17-year-old would-be plumber is particularly good at 'interpersonal communication' when such a phrase is clearly more aptly applied to someone like a bank director."

Forrester, who works for "thousands of people all over the world" through the internet, charges upwards of 45 to show his clients to prospective employers in the best possible light, but says: "I would never knowingly be party to a lie or give the wrong impression on a CV...though I have to take the client's word at face value.

"In the end, although I consider accuracy to be quite vital, the checking of the given facts has to be up to the potential employer."

Or, as is increasingly the case these days, their chosen CV vetting agency.