27 September 2023

Big little lies: Why so many job seekers play loose with the truth

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Valerie Bolden-Barrett* says a new survey finds 78 per cent of job applicants lie, but most hiring managers don’t seem to care.


Seventy-eight per cent of job seekers “misrepresent themselves” throughout the job application process, according to a Checkster survey of 400 applicants and 400 hiring managers.

The report also revealed 66 per cent of hiring managers are “willing to accept” this.

Sixty per cent of applicants reported claiming they had mastered skills of which they had only basic knowledge.

More than half of applicants said they worked longer in some jobs to hide having worked for another employer.

Other false claims from applicants included having more experience, falsifying their reasons for leaving a job, inflating their job titles and lying about where they earned their degrees.

“While these high levels of applicant misrepresentation are shocking, what’s even more disturbing is that most companies do not weed out these fraudulent applicants during the hiring process,” said Yves Lermusi, CEO of Checkster, in a media release.

“This suggests that there are most likely people in your organisation with vastly different standards and who would knowingly offer a job to someone who lied on their résumé or during the interview.”

Job seekers lie — this finding is not a new one.

A January ResumeLab survey found 31 per cent of job seekers had been caught in the act of lying, and 65 per cent of them were either not hired or fired.

And 93 per cent of respondents said they knew someone who had lied on a résumé.

These findings arrive as other reports provide insight into how applicant tracking systems have influenced job seekers.

Of the 22 per cent of applicants who understand the recruiting tech, 88 per cent have optimised their résumés to boost their chances of getting a job, an October 2019 TribePad study of UK-based workers found.

Applicants’ résumé doctoring lines up with the embellishments and lies reported in the Checkster survey.

TribePad respondents said they listed skills to match requirements, loaded their résumé with buzzwords, lied about experience and cheated on employment tests.

As recruiting professionals hone in on talent acquisition — an area HR leaders forecasted would be a top challenge in 2020 — they may want to prioritise reference checking.

If sizeable numbers of applicants and, ultimately, candidates are lying about their credentials, experiences and skills, employers may lack the quality of workforce they need to meet demands.

After all, managers who do conduct reference checks rule out as many as a third of candidates from consideration, according to a March 2019 Accountemps survey.

* Valerie Bolden-Barrett is a business writer and content specialist and contributor to HR Dive.

This article first appeared at www.hrdive.com.

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