As Published in Business 2 Business , December 2005

Resume lies leave a paper tale

By Ira S Wolfe

 

Resignations and terminations occur so often today you hardly expect to read about them in the newspaper, much less as headline copy. What gives when this normally inconsequential human resources story gains such prominence?  It’s a matter of degrees, so to speak.  

Gary isn’t the man we thought we hired 

Take Gary, a county human resources chief officer, as one example of a hiring decision gone bad. Michael Brown, the ex-FEMA director, is another example.  (See Business2Business………) Both men, who garnered their jobs based on the right credentials, failed to withstand public scrutiny of their resumes after their performance became suspect.

Poor job performance isn’t always the issue – at least right away. According to his boss, President Bush, Brown was doing “a heck of a job” right up until the time he was tested by Hurricane Katrina. Even after Gary resigned managers and co-workers defended him as talented and hardworking. The county commissioners even had recommended a $10,000 raise for Gary a few months earlier. What’s up with these two?  How did they become the poster children for the “failed hires club?” 

Both men were unmasked when a disgruntled public questioned their credentials. An overdue resume check showed each man was not as he presented himself to be.  Resume alterations, exaggerations, and outright lies cost them the privilege of a second chance, usually offered to employees who make their first mistakes.

When trust is broken and the public discovers faked credentials all bets are off. Let’s say that hell hath no fury like a manager or public scorned.

A little this, a little that

One thing is certain: Gary deserves a master’s degree in the art of exaggeration.  A Lancaster (PA) New Era investigation found Gary mis- or overstated his academic credentials. His resume listed a doctorate in administration, a master’s degree in decision-making and ethics, and a bachelor of science diploma in health science and psychology.

Here’s the truth: The doctorate degree, granted by a non-accredited on-line school is in philosophy. He earned a diploma certificate from Marine Corps University and a master’s degree in theology. His bachelor of science degree is in speech and hearing science. 

Gary pushed the envelope even more by describing his work and management experience. His resume listed background as an assistant superintendent He claimed to have supervised 500 staff members. His leadership credentials included a stint as city council president.

Again, the truth: Gary was a substitute teacher. His work as “assistant superintendent” was as an unpaid intern. His supervised approximately 100 people and, when asked, no one at the city council could recall knowing Gary.

Similarly, Michael Brown claimed he was director of a nursing facility but the nursing home administrator told Time magazine Brown was “not a person that anyone here is familiar with.”  He offered his oversight of an emergence services division as proof of experience but in fact, he was only an assistant to a city manager.

Are Gary and Brown isolated cases?  Hardly.  Estimates indicate 10 percent to 30 percent of job seekers fib or flat-out lie on their resumes. In 2004, the outplacement firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, reviewed 249,000 resumes and found 52 percent had discrepancies. 

Where do the lies begin? 

Most often, executive job seekers have the nerve to claim an advanced degree from an educational institution they've never set foot in. This lie is so pervasive that Jude Werra, president of an executive search firm, began compiling a "Liars’ Index" ten years ago. 

To compile the Liars’ Index, Werra divides the number of people who have misrepresented their education on a resume by the total number of people whose education his company has checked.  During the first six month of his year, the index was 10.73 percent, down slightly from 11.88 percent during the preceding six-month period. The average over the past two years is 17.33percent, with the index going as high as 23.3 percent.

In addition to beefing up education and job experience, job seekers bank on inflated accomplishments and awards to gain a new position.  Take Michael Brown who listed “Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University” as one of his accomplishments. A director of university relations at the school said Brown “wasn’t a professor here, he was only a student here.”

And that’s not all.  Also making it in the top five of little white resume lies, job seekers fudge their compensation and reasons for leaving, too.

Does everyone who lies get disqualified or fired?

It depends. A whopping 94.6 percent of Werra’s survey respondents would pass over a candidate who falsified a degree. Approximately eighty percent of respondents disqualify candidates who falsify job assignments and titles. Werra found greater tolerance for lesser offenses with 41 percent of respondents forgoing candidates who falsified dates of employment; the remaining 59 percent would give a candidate a chance to explain. Claims of inflated results would be a total turnoff for 35.7percent of respondents; 21.4 percent would categorically disqualify someone who omitted an employer from a resume.

Why is this happening? 

The Internet makes earning advanced education degrees, whether legitimate or fake, a relatively easy process. A global and mobile society means workers move smoothly from east to west and north to south, and to other countries, almost at whim. Downsizings, mergers, and a migration of managers from one company to another leave a void in human resources’ staff ability to verify references. Caution about lawsuits translates into a reluctance to give any meaningful information about ex-employees. Overwhelming managerial workloads forces many hiring managers to accept a resume at face value and a job seeker at his word.

As two government employers learned the hard way, what you see isn’t always what you get.

Sidebar:

How can employers make sure the person hired is the right person for the job?

The goal of any selection tool or technique is to make sure the person you hire is not a person you will later fire.

Behavioral interviewing is both art and science that successfully improves the odds of hiring correctly the first time by nearly 50 percent.  But many hiring managers aren’t good at interviewing.  Quite a few admit discomfort with asking candidates tough, but important, questions. Others have not developed their powers of observation and skills for active listening.

Job matching is an accurate and reliable solution.  The most comprehensive job match utilizes the whole person approach.  This includes a behavioral interview, background and reference check, plus an evaluation of a candidate’s work style, values and motivators, personality fit and, for certain positions and roles, cognitive skills.  This approach requires the use of multiple assessments (behavioral, values and personality), simply because no one assessment including the interview, despite many publishers’ claims to the contrary, is constructed to predict all facets of human behavior. By combining personality testing with behavioral interviewing and background checking, managers enjoy an impressive 90 percent success rate in hiring the right person the first time.  (The interview alone offers success only slightly better than flipping a coin – 52%!.)

Ira S. Wolfe is founder of Success Performance Solutions (www.super-solutions.com), a consulting firm providing employment and career test. He has also authored two books: Understanding Business Values and Motivators and The Perfect Labor Storm: Why Worker Shortages Will Not Go Away