Hiring IT? Watch out for these lies
Filed under: Applicant background screening, IT staffing, Special Report
As HR knows, plenty of candidates aren’t completely honest on their resumes. But which employees are most likely to bend the truth? Near the top of the list are applicants for IT jobs — an area in which dishonesty can cause serious problems for companies.
Almost half (49%) of all employers have discovered lies on candidates’ resumes or applications, according to a recent CareerBuilder survey. The lies are more common in some job categories than others — for example, a full 57% of companies said they’d uncovered fibs when filling IT jobs.
That makes IT third on the list, behind hospitality workers (60%) and transportation employees (59%).
Why is a lying IT applicant such a big concern? Dangers range from hiring employees without the knowledge and experience required for critical functions to having a dishonest tech worker wreak serious havoc on the company’s computer systems.
Take the example of Terry Childs, a former network administrator for the City of San Francisco. Childs was recently arrested after he blocked access to several parts of the city’s network and refused to hand over the passwords — creating an expensive dilemma that kept a lot of work from being done.
It turned out that Childs had several criminal convictions on his record, including burglary and theft charges. However, he withheld that info on his application, and the city failed to perform an adequate background check.
Common lies
What does HR need to look for when investigating a candidate’s background? Here are the most common applicant lies uncovered, according to CareerBuilder:
- embellished responsibilities of past jobs (38%)
- exaggerated skill sets (18%)
- altered employment dates to cover gaps between jobs (12%)
- phony academic degrees (10%)
- jobs listed at companies the candidate never worked for (7%), and
- inflated job titles (5%).
