Be accurate with your CV

With a steady year-on-year increase in organisations choosing to screen existing and potential employees, job-seekers who are planning to lie about or omit information regarding their qualifications or criminal history in an upcoming job interview will most likely find themselves exposed, unemployed and stuck with a bad reputation.

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This is according to Ina van der Merwe, CEO and founder of Managed Integrity Evaluation (MIE). Van der Merwe noted that demand for background screening services in South Africa and the African continent as a whole continues to rise meaning dishonest job-seekers will soon have nowhere to hide.

“We have experienced an overall 15 per cent increase in background screening in the last five years and over January and February 2017, MIE has already conducted close to 90 000 qualification verifications and over 100 000 criminal record checks,” she said.

Van der Merwe shared MIE statistics for 2017 to-date which indicate that 16 per cent of qualifications checked were found to be either misrepresented, cancelled or altogether fraudulent.

“This means that out of about 90 000 screened candidates, over 14 000 candidates’ qualifications contained inconsistencies. This level of dishonesty is also apparent in our criminal history vetting with a present risk of 9 per cent. This includes those found to definitely have a record, those which show up as inconclusive as well as pending cases.”

She said, “In some case you may find that the details of the criminal record may not have impacted the potential employers hiring decision. However, having not disclosed such past behaviour when asked to do so can give an employer a very bad first impression that the candidate in question may not be open, honest and transparent.”

She said it is important for employers not to simply disqualify a candidate on the basis of having a criminal record. “Weighing up the nature of the past crime against the job at hand may reveal that there is no risk to the applicant fulfilling the role successfully,” said van der Merwe.

She highlights that while job-seekers may feel as though embellishing their resume will make them stand out from the crowd in an increasingly competitive job market, being exposed for CV fraud will not only see them lose out on a job in that moment but will also taint their reputation in the market and make it even more difficult for them to find employment moving forward.