by Jason Morris

This article does not focus on background checks.  It does however give great tips to hiring professionals on how to deter the applicant from lying to you.

3 WAYS TO CATCH JOB APPLICANTS WHO LIE TO YOU

Dr. Michael Mercer

You can use pre-employment tests, interview tricks and more to uncover if a job applicant is lying to you or embellishing the truth.

Question: Did you ever have a job applicant lie to you or, to be charitable, embellish the truth?

Answer: You probably answered, “Yes.”

This is important. In my third book, “Hire the Best and Avoid the Rest,” I often have been quoted as writing, “Whatever behavior you see from an applicant in the screening process is likely the best behavior you will see from that person.” So, if an applicant lies on your tests, interviews and forms, that person also may be dishonest in work he or she does, if you hire the person.

But, don´t worry. Reason: I will reveal to you methods you can use to

a. discover if an applicant lied to you

b. make an applicant hesitant to lie to you

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by Jason Morris

The moral of this story; Hiring managers will do background checks and uncover resume lies!

Résumés are a critical part of any job search. They are the most effective marketing tool any of us have about who we are and what we can do. And all of us want our résumé to be the best possible representation of our work.

But some workers turn their résumés into a work of fiction instead of a representation of fact. A CareerBuilder.com survey of hiring managers and workers looked at the tall tales and bold lies used on résumés.

Story Highlights:

• Many job applicants get too creative on resumes, making false claims

• Highest rate of resume dishonesty reported in hospitality industry

• College attendance, graduation is easy to verify; don’t claim degree not earned

• Most companies disqualified candidates after discovering their dishonest

Here are the 10 most outrageous whoppers, as reported by hiring managers:

1. Candidate claimed to be a member of the Kennedy family

2. Applicant invented a school that did not exist

3. Job seeker submitted a résumé with someone else’s photo inserted into the document

4. Candidate claimed to be a member of Mensa
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5. Applicant claimed to have worked for the hiring manager before, but never had

6. Job seeker claimed to be the CEO of a company when he was an hourly employee

7. Candidate listed military experience dating back to before he was born

8. Job seeker included samples of work, which were actually those of the interviewer

9. Applicant claimed to be Hispanic when he was 100 percent Caucasian

10. Candidate claimed to have been a professional baseball player

Modifying your résumé is a lot like airbrushing a photo, and many of us may have made minor tweaks to our résumés. You may have revised a job title that sounded uninspiring or omitted a hellish work experience from your list.

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by Jason Morris

When lying on your resume goes wrong! This interview goes wrong when she is asked to demonstrate something on her resume. A little Sunday humor!

When lying on resume goes wrong - Watch more free videos

by Jason Morris

I found this as my lead story today on Yahoo! We often give the same resume writing advice, “don’t lie!”. Here is a good article focusing on other strong resume writing tips.  While we still agree “don’t lie!” is the best advise we can lend, writing an effective resume and covering all the important points is a close second.  This advice will get you in the door…..our advice will help you get past the background checks!

The Biggest Resume Mistake You Can Make
by Caroline Potter, Yahoo! HotJobs

Your resume is the most important document in any job search. But what if you’re submitting resume after resume and receiving no results at all — not even a call? Your resume may be fatally flawed.

How can a resume betray a job seeker? It’s not just typos or poor formatting. According to Lauren Milligan, founder of ResuMAYDAY, a resume-writing and career coaching firm based near Chicago, “The biggest flaw for a resume is when it fails to showcase a person’s accomplishments, contributions, and results, and instead spouts a job description of each position he’s held.”

Use these three tips to make sure your resume doesn’t betray you.

Read Article

by Jason Morris

The examples used in this blog are older but the advice is the same; don’t lie on your resume. Some of the comments on the blog are rather scary, one says you should lie, why not? He/She goes on to say:

” You’re just a number to the HR folks. If you hit your numbers, it don’t matter. Only sentimental fools tell the truth. From what I’m seeing on TV, no one cares.”

We know this couldn’t be further from the truth, especially with HR departments that conduct thorough background checks.  HR folks do care! Their job is to bring qualified personnel into their organizations.  In many ways an organizations success and failure begins and ends with them!

Read on

by Jason Morris

My mother always taught me not to seek benefit from others misery.  Normally I would agree with her. I usually do! Unfortunately I won’t in this case, sorry mom!  I have no admiration or tolerance for people who lie on their resume.  Yesterday we wrote about Donald Trumps advise on resume fraud, today we find a serious offender. Who do you blame, the liar….or the districts failure to conduct a proper background check?

ALBION, N.Y. - The superintendent of an upstate school district faces a felony charge for allegedly lying on his resume, claiming he served 17 years as a state trooper.

State police arrested 48-year-old Richard Galante Wednesday and charged him with offering a false instrument.

Galante became superintenent of the Medina School District in Orleans County in 2003 after working in the district since 2000.

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by Jason Morris

In doing research for another blog post I came across an interesting website, Trump University.  Mr. Trump has obviously been capitalizing on his fame and the popularity of his show, The Apprentice. Like employeescreen University, Trump University gives tips on being successful in the business world.  Trump’s goal is to help entrepreneurs become successful.  Our job is to help them stay in business by hiring qualified people.

Trump has a great post about why you should not lie on your resume. In it he says:

What’s the harm, you wonder, in a few minor deceptions? Those lies can come back to haunt you. Recently, resume inaccuracies have hurt the careers of executives at several organizations, including Radio Shack, Bausch & Lomb, and the U.S. Olympic Committee. This is serious stuff. Good executives don’t want liars to lead their companies.

It’s a great post; short and sweet but it makes a great point: We all know what happens when he finds out you lied…..”You’re FIRED!”

To read the whole post click here!

by Jason Morris

Back in March we wrote about FoodTV star Robert Irvine being fired for lying on his resume.  Normally we don’t do follow up stories, especially when the news is old.  I am taking liberties here because I just found out about this! One of my favorite chef’s, Michael Symon is taking over for Robert Irvine on Dinner: Impossible.

Hey, I’m a Clevelander, we don’t get much excitement here!  Every year for our sports teams we hear “Wait till next year!”  Our city has been rated dead last in about every category! I am happy to re-announce Cleveland’s own Michael Symon is officially taking over this show.  Symon’s restaurants are incredible and he will be a great addition to this show.

To my knowledge, Symon has never lied on his resume and I can vouch for his fantastic food!

by Jason Morris

Over the past few years there have been some high profile stories of colleges, sports teams and major corporations not conducting proper background checks.  When Notre Dame hired coach George O’Leary they didn’t verify his resume, had they done so they would have found he lied.  Marilee Jones, Dean at M.I.T. did the same.  When the Arizona Diamondbacks hired Wally Backman he was dismissed one day later.  Backman had a DUI and a lot of financial issues.  It appears the National Hockey League (NHL) is the latest in these high profile stories.  Notre Dame, The Diamondbacks and M.I.T. had no idea that we would be using them as examples in every speech, presentation and case study.  Congratulations NHL, we will now be including you!

Nashville Predators part-owner William (Boots) Del Biaggio III, who has filed for bankruptcy and has been accused of defrauding millions of dollars in loans, was allowed to bypass some of the National Hockey League’s financial background checks for prospective owners, Nashville newspaper The Tennessean reported Thursday.

The allegations come from Canadian entrepreneur Doug Bergeron, who was approached by Del Biaggio in September about investing in the team.

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by Jason Morris

India, one of the largest pools of IT professionals in the world is seeing an increased need for background checks.  One of the reasons we launched employeescreen University was to educate employers across the globe on the virtues of doing proper employee background investigations.  One bad hire can cost your company millions in lost revenue and a lot of embarrassment.  Global background checks or “international background screening” is a growing trend. (Read employeescreenIQ 2009 Trends).

This story is a perfect example of why organizations need to tighten up their hiring practices.

IT Firms Have No Place for a Fake Resume

The IT-BPO industry is becoming increasingly clear that a fake resume can cost you your job with India’s largest IT serivces provider, Tata Consultancy Service (TCS), being the latest to recently ask close to 20 employees at its Kolkata centre to leave. The company, during the background verification, found that these employees have used fudged resumes to get jobs.

In the recent past all the major IT firms including Infosys, Satyam and Wipro Technologies and many mid-cap firms have taken a hard stand on fake or fudged resumes. However, the incidents continue. First Advantage, a leading background screening firm, in its recent report states that 30 per cent of all the resumes they have screened have discrepancies. In 2006-07 the company screened over 2 million applicants across industries. Ashish Dehade, managing director (West Asia), First Advantage says, “The percentage has been increasing. In 2006 it was 16-17 per cent, for 2007 its was 30 per cent and while we are just six months into 2008 the percentage is around 30 per cent.”

TCS is not the only firm doing this. Earlier Infosys had asked close to 100 employees to leave in FY07 due to discrepancies found in the resumes. Same goes for Satyam and Wipro Technologies. Some time back it was reported that Wipro would be sharing with other IT firms the database of job applicants who have faked information in their CVs.

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