Those of you who watched this week’s The Apprentice in which the candidates were interviewed by a number of unnecessarily aggressive interviewers may have spotted that not all of them were totally truthful on their CVs (ie, they told lies). My feeling is that people generally do not see inflating a CV to be as dishonest as once they might. I also suspect that reference checking is not always taken sufficiently seriously.
Even if you do not accidentally hire an out-and-out crook, people who under-perform because they overstated their experience, or who mess up your pay structure because you matched an untrue salary, can seriously unsettle the existing team. In my experience, it is difficult for an applicant to hide anything serious without changing some hard facts. You should check all the facts that were relevant to your decision to employ and state this intention on your application form.
So what should you check for? At a minimum: employment dates, job titles and relevant qualifications; the nature and scope of responsibilities; broadly how successful they were and why they left. Alledged self-employment, or full-time study, are common ways to hide periods of unemployment, incarceration or jobs that went wrong – so check those very carefully. And, contrary to CIPD advice on their factsheet, do check the salaries and benefits claimed. The CIPD claim that if someone can do the job they should get the appropriate salary whatever they were earning before. I say that the questions you asked at interview were conditioned by what you thought they were earning. Recruiters have a duty of fairness but that includes being fair to the employer as well.
