As a candidate have you ever been tempted to embellish your CV, even just slightly, to get that competitive edge over other applicants? Perhaps by adding a few more months to a previous role which shows you gained more skills and experience, affecting the likelihood of you being hired for the job over someone else. Or even by using a flashier job title to give more weight to your current role which could potentially put your CV at the top of the pile. If you are lucky, no one will be the wiser to your small changes and you could have an improved and more impressive CV helping you through the interview process on your way to that shiny new role everyone is competing for.
Due to the faster pace in which organisations are now conducting business, employers don’t have time to look deeply into people’s older employment details right? This couldn’t be farther from the truth. With the current economic circumstances causing high rates of unemployment, employment application fraud is unfortunately more prevalent. Many job seekers have become desperate, not only applying for jobs they are unsuited for or those they don’t want, but they are fraudulently embellishing and exaggerating their CV’s, especially where experience, education, and credentials are concerned. Employers and HR departments have responded by investing more time and money in screening CV’s and other application materials to ensure the accuracy of the backgrounds presented.
This issue has just recently come to light on a relatively significant scale last week when a top City lawyer, Dennis O’Riordan, was exposed as a fake after it was discovered that he had lied on his CV to secure roles at various firms during his five-year legal career. He claimed he had a First Class degree from Oxford University, a doctorate in philosophy and a Master’s degree at Harvard University, among other fabrications. His glittering CV may have got past his employers at the time, but it was an unnamed barristers’ chambers who found him out when he applied for a job in November last year. O’Riordan has now been suspended from practice for three years, and will no doubt suffer the consequences of a tarnished reputation.
Where is the line between self-promotion and falsehood? The simplest answer is: keep it real. Companies now have a zero tolerance to grey areas, and if you are discovered having falsified information it is liable to damage your reputation in the workplace among other consequences. With the wide range of networks now available to people who provide background checks for companies via references, web platforms and even your own connections. Stretching the truth is risky – at any point in your career.
Shana is Recruitment Team Assistant and doesn’t understand why a lawyer would lie.
