14 February 2008
These days more job seekers are lying in their CVs – Abacus Recruitment
One of the biggest problems facing recruitment companies these days is the worrying increase in the number of job seekers who are lying on their CVs, making it difficult for recruiters to truly vouch for their candidates – a situation that spells potential bad times for both recruiters and employers.
This is the opinion of Karen Geldenhuys, managing director of Pretoria-based IT and disabled-focused recruitment company, Abacus Recruitment. “We are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to double-check and verify the veracity of curriculum vitas,” said Geldenhuys. “These days it is also not just a case of checking up on qualifications stated on CVs, we are also having to do extensive credit checks with credit bureaus due to the increasing occurrence of dishonesty among applicants. This is naturally making it difficult for us to operate speedily and fill vacancies that some of our clients need filling – especially the urgent vacancies, of which there are a growing number due to the skills shortage.”
Geldenhuys said that until fairly recently only a handful of job seekers were guilty of lying in their CVs. But now 10% - or more – of CVs are “not worth the paper they are written on”.
“It is not a case of just being inventive with the way the CVs are written. In many cases, it is simply blatant lying.
“One of the problems we face is verifying a job seeker’s history of employment. Some candidates record an employment starting date at an employer and never mention another company that they’ve been employed with for only one or two months – and then the starting date of their current employer, or another company. This means that they’ve been with one company only for a very short period, maybe not even making the company’s probation period – or something else happened that they did not want to mention on their CV.
“Getting confirmation of employment details from previous employers is often fraught with difficulties: some don’t keep proper records, some have closed down, and others have merged with other companies, or have been acquired. This makes the task of getting hold of verifiable records a difficult and time consuming task.”
Geldenhuys said this situation – and the fact that job seekers are prone to being “inventive” with their CVs – prolongs the recruitment process. “There is a time and a cost factor involved here,” she said.
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