A survey has found that up to one third of job-seekers lie about important information on their CV each year. The UK Higher Education Degree Datacheck reports that of this figure, 40% of respondents overstate their academic qualifications, and over 10% completely fabricate a degree. When questioned, 62% of employers admitted to only sometimes requesting the degree certificates or transcripts of candidates, while 33% claimed that they had never done so.
The UK Higher Education Degree Datacheck was set up with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, and acts as the official service for providing “candidate verification and university authentication” for UK Higher Education. It charges employers £10 to complete verification checks on candidates, allowing businesses to find out whether the information provided regarding educational background is actually true. The organisation has 27 partner universities, and it even has a dedicated blog where its business services director, Jayne Rowley, names and shames individuals who have been caught, and often charged for, falsifying their educational qualifications.
Rowley says: “Many of us want to believe that people are telling the truth, so we place our trust in references, applications and interviews.”
“With a low perception of the frequency and risks of qualification fraud it’s easy to become complacent. But some people are unscrupulous and looking to take advantage. If someone is lying about their qualifications, we have to question their overall integrity as a potential employee.”
According to the HEDD, the most popular lie on CVs relates to educational qualifications, and a number of high-profile individuals, including top executives, have been found guilty of doing just the same.
In 2012, Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson was fired just 5 months after entering the role, when he was found to have lied about having two degrees. Though his CV stated he had a degree in accounting and computer science, only the first claim was actually true. Jeffrey Archer, the ex-Conservative MP, claimed he had a degree from Oxford when, in fact, he had a diploma. In 2014 Wal-Mart’s most senior spokesperson, David Tovar, resigned when he was found to be lying about holding a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware, when really, he had failed to complete the coursework to achieve the qualification.
In the UK, it is illegal to lie about your education and to misrepresent yourself to your employer. A number of cases have ended in people being not just fired, but sentenced, imprisoned and even suspended from their profession for changing their grades or claiming to have a qualification they do not. In one case, a woman was jailed for forging her references.
Increased competition has clearly led to people becoming more desperate to impress hiring managers. But a false claim on a CV in the early stages of your career has the potential to destroy your entire future, especially if the truth emerges years, sometimes decades, down the line.
There is certainly a very strong case for companies to make use of one of the many organisations that offer verification checks. Doing these checks before making appointments has the potential to save your company from humiliation later on. Rowley appeals to firms: “I would urge businesses to dig a little deeper and not take CVs at face value. Make it part of standard HR policy, regardless of the seniority or credibility of the applicant.”
It also quite common for candidates to inflate other areas of their CV including their achievements, skills and even extra-curricular activities. This happens across the board from graduate applications writing to director level. A common perception is that this is not as serious as lying about a degree, for example. Even so, it is still dishonest and does misrepresent you. It also indicates to employers that you are possibly someone who is not to be trusted. Falsifying CVs usually has a way of coming back to bite you, especially if you apply for work with companies with HR directors who are on the ball. If this is something you are considering, then you would be wise to reconsider your tactics!
