Job fraud crackdown: A reminder not to tell porkies on your CV

With recruiters and employers bringing greater scrutiny to the hiring process, applicants who repeatedly and brazenly embellish their credentials are more likely to get caught, and the more senior the role the greater the risks.

Thanks to a number of high-profile appointments made to people who were subsequently found to have fake credentials, companies are deploying digital measures to weed out people who lie on their CV.

Up until now, companies have had to take much of the detail within the humble CV – which started becoming fancier in the 1980s with the rise of the PC – at face value. However, in recent year’s counter-intelligence measures being used by HR departments to determine if a candidate is lying include digital body language, psychological testing, and gamification which incorporates game elements to second-guess whether certain behaviour is genuine or contrived.

What’s also making gaps within an applicant’s CV more visible is the rise of online job boards, recruitment algorithms, plus professional networks like LinkedIn. For example, former Myer executive, Andrew Flanagan, who landed a $400,000 general manager position using fake CV and references, had also used bogus credentials to land, albeit short-lived, senior positions at Bendigo Health, Specialty Fashion Group and the Australian Arab Chamber of Commerce.

To make life increasingly difficult for Flanagan, he resurfaced on a database of specialty technology recruiter, Affix with a totally different CV some time later.

While fake references clearly make the recruitment process a lot harder, an even bigger issue, warns Jarrad Skeen managing director of Affix is the common practise employers have of leaving the reference checks until last. Sadly, he says many employers get so emotionally invested in filling vacancies that they’re pressured into taking a rubber stamp approach to reference checking.

Before putting themselves and a candidate through many rounds of interviews, Skeen recommends highlighting any potential issues through appropriate reference checking upfront. Not only does this streamline the process, but what it also does, adds Skeen is remove any emotional ties between the reference checks and the outcome.