CV Fraud: How To Spot Candidates That Lie And Protect Your Business From Them

Unfortunately, CV fraud is a common and significant problem in workplaces. A recent study found that 70% of workers admitted to previously lying on their CVs. This is a shocking and concerning statistic for teams that are looking to make great hires based on genuine CVs and truthful interview answers.

Understanding how to protect against CV fraud by spotting lies on CVs, can help businesses reduce the risk that they might be affected by them.

Where are the most common lies on CVs?

Organisations must be aware of the type of lies that can be present on CVs in order to know what might need to be treated with suspicion and investigated further. The lies that appear most regularly are in regard to:

• Falsely increasing qualifications (21% of survey respondents admitted to doing this)
• Inventing hobbies (34%)
• Elaborating on role responsibilities (41%)
• Enhancing example and success metrics (45%)
• Changing the length of employment (37%)
• Giving a false reference (25%)
• Exaggerating the number of people managed (45%).

All of these lies can have serious consequences for organisations. These outcomes can range from businesses hiring underqualified professionals who require further resources, support, and training than initially expected, employees who cannot reach predicted targets, or even potential security risks. Additionally, even small lies could result in candidates who committed CV fraud securing roles over other candidates who could’ve been better options for the company.

Why do candidates commit CV fraud?

With lying on CVs so common, there are many reasons why candidates commit CV fraud.

• Desperation

If the candidates have been facing a long period of unemployment, they may feel the need to be dishonest in order to “get their foot in the door” and then try to impress during the interview stage, hoping that the lies won’t be caught out.

• Covering up past mistakes

Shame or discomfort over something that happened in their professional past could result in them committing CV fraud and lying on their CV. This often includes changing dates to cover up periods of unemployment and deleting roles where they were only employed for a short period of time.

• Low risk of detection

If they’ve never been caught out at previous workplaces for lies on their CV, they may think the lies will never be checked.

• Believing requirements are unnecessary

Candidates may see certain job requirements, such as education, experience, or responsibilities as not important, so they think that they can stretch the truth in order to match those expectations.

• Elevating their position

Many candidates may lie in the hope of securing a job above their abilities. By inflating metrics, responsibilities in projects, or management of employees, candidates may appear like they are suitable for more senior higher-paying roles than their actual capabilities equate to.

What are the signs of CV fraud?

Lies on CVs can be hard to spot for many, however, there are often certain signs that can cause suspicion, such as:

Perfectly matched skills

Not many candidates will have the exact same experience as what organisations are looking for at the exact right level. Therefore, perfect matches may seem a little suspicious.

Companies must ensure that they cross-check information on CVs with LinkedIn profiles and then investigate further through evidence-based questions at the interview stage and through reference-checking for candidates that seem too good to be true.

Unlikely achievements

Candidates’ achievements that seem remarkable, may be too good to be true. For example, if they have only been in their current role for a short amount of time but appear to have achieved double what you would expect the same level of professional to reach in that time span, it might be an area of concern that should be investigated. They may be overexaggerating their responsibilities and their successes.

Vague answers

Candidates should always mention on their CVs their exact involvement in projects by saying what they did, not what the team achieved. Whilst some may be uncomfortable bragging or mentioning their individual successes, metrics should still be provided. Vague answers with no details, metrics, or no mention of their involvement, might make businesses question how involved they were in certain projects.

Contradicting information online

It is always a good idea for businesses to cross check information from CVs with candidates’ online profiles. This can include their LinkedIn profiles or their current company team pages. For example, if a candidate reports that they have been employed by their current organisation since May 2019, but their LinkedIn or team page on their company website shows they actually started in September, that could suggest that they have changed their employment dates on their CV to cover a period of unemployment or short employment at another company. People may change information on their CVs without thinking about what other details are available about them online.

Fake references

Some individuals who want to cover up mistakes, or enhance their skills and experiences, may also look to include fake references in the hope they won’t be contacted.

How lies on CVs can affect organisations

Depending on the severity of the lie, CV fraud can have various effects on organisations.

Lies that aren’t caught during the recruitment process can end in businesses making bad hires. This can have a domino effect that leads to productivity issues, operational problems, and even reputational consequences if the professional is client-facing and fails to meet standards. Additionally, if other employees are having to pick up extra work to cover for the new hire, this can cause stress, burnout and low morale in the team and could lead to higher staff turnover and great employees needing to be replaced.

CV fraud is not something that businesses should take lightly during a recruitment process and should always be investigated if suspected.

How can organisations protect themselves from CV fraud?

Businesses that have a thorough recruitment process with clear procedures to stringently assess and evaluate candidates, will be the most likely to spot CV fraud and can then address it appropriately. Certain procedures that should be written into every recruitment process include adequate reference checking, skills assessments, and a well thought out interview stages.

Reference checks

It doesn’t have to be complex, even basic reference checks, like simply asking previous businesses to confirm employment dates and job titles, can help to catch out lies.

Organisations should never expect previous employers to outright say anything negative about candidates, due to legal reasons. However, there are some questions businesses can ask previous employers that can be read into. These can include what projects the candidate took part in, what their level of involvement was and whether they reached their targets etc. This can allow organisations to confirm certain details candidates have stipulated in their CVs.

Whilst reference checks can be really helpful in confirming certain details, organisations should keep in mind that previous employers may not reply or, if past managers have moved on, they may not have accurate detailed information.

Skills assessments

Due to uncertainty around how helpful reference checks can be in certain situations, organisations should take a multipronged approach to assessing candidates. This includes through evaluating their skills with a detailed skills assessment. Doing so will truly identify whether candidates have both the experience they say they do and are competent enough to undertake the role.

Adequately assessing candidates’ skills through assessments, will ensure that organisations choose not only the most qualified candidate but also protect their interests from bad hires.

Interview questions

For even more protection from CV fraud, businesses should follow up skills assessments with competency-based interview questions. Undertaking both skills assessments and interviews can help organisations confirm and check multiple claims by candidates and spot signs of CV fraud.

Competency-based questioning can include asking candidates to describe how they would approach certain projects or problems and to give examples of how they have done so in the past. Adequately skilled candidates will be able to answer with ease and give clear examples of their past experiences. Organisations should be suspicious if a candidate bragged about their experiences in their CV but can’t seem to expand on them sufficiently at the interview stage.

If you would like assistance in protecting your business from CV fraud, and need help to hire great IT talent for your organisation, click here to get in touch with our team.