Spotting lies on a CV – lessons from The Apprentice

A year ago, practically to the day, Workplace Law’s HR expert, David Woollcott spoke to BBC Radio Cambridgeshire about the pitfalls of lying on your CV. This morning he was back in the hot seat – discussing the same issues, brought about by last night’s episode of The Apprentice.

The five remaining candidates were subjected to a gruelling round of interviews last night with Sir Alan Sugar’s trusted business colleagues, and once again, as with Lee McQueen last year, some of the candidates’ claims did not stand up to scrutiny.

Yasmina Siadatan, a restaurant owner, seemed confused by some of the information she had included on her CV, mixing up gross and net profit, and even turnover, suggesting her figures were far from accurate. Lorraine Tighe also mis-reported employment dates, leading her interviewer to accuse her of overstating her length of current employment by a year.

David Woollcott said:

“Research suggests that up to 70% of people do some form of lying or distortion of the truth on their CVs in order to try and gain some sort of advantage and I would think (although I have no evidence to show this) that in this competitive time, when so many people are out of work then the temptation is to improve your chances and to increase the information that goes on your CV in order to beat the competition.”

The recession is of course putting more people out of work, meaning it is an employer’s market, with dozens more potential candidates for a job. But this brings up the problem of not having the time to sift the good from the bad – and the fibs from the truth.

Advising candidates on potential pitfalls to avoid, Woollcott said:

“The important thing is to avoid the obvious mistakes – a lot of people might be tempted to change their education and qualifications and embellish or exaggerate the number of school certificates gained or the level of degree – for example, say that they got a first as opposed to a 2.2 – but it would be very, very easy for employers, if they had the time, to phone up the university or the school and find out exactly what level of qualification they have actually got. The trouble is, whereas if you got, for instance this time last year, ten applications to read through, you’re more likely to get 100 CVs or even more this year, so therefore a lot of interviewees are probably relying on the fact that the employer will not have the time to check every single CV.”

The Apprentice is, of course, a TV show, and has a dedicated team of researchers to verify facts and check to see if the candidates are telling the whole truth. In a real life scenario, the situation is obvisouly very different.

“If an organisation receives a 100+ CVs and they then whittle it down to four or five people that they actually want to conduct an interview with then that becomes much easier – but the second area where employees are more likely to lie or distort the truth is where it comes to relating career history – they might change the dates to cover up gaps in employment, or they might lengthen a period where they have been with an employer for only a short time, or even omit an employer if they were dismissed from that job – so it’s better to be absolutely truthful, there’s no point in lying because in most cases the employer will find out, either before they make an offer, or sometime later during the employment period.”

He warned:

If you make one lie on your CV and it is discovered, then that puts all sorts of question marks in a potential employer’s mind in terms of what are you going to be like, and act like, when you are actually in the employment of that particular organisation.

“If you’re going to lie on your CV you’re going to have to be very, very good at the interview stage because you often forget what you put on the CV and the moment an employer picks up on a point, and pursues that with supplementary questions, then that’s when you get holed below the waterline and everything falls apart.”

To listen to the full interview, go to BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.