Resume Lies - Employment Background Screening and Ethics: How Businesses Today Can Avoid Hiring Cheaters and Liars

There are big differences in degrees of ethical compromises. Though they all boil down to unethical behavior, it is also true that some actions can be more harmful than others. Take, for example, the person who lies about whether their friend looks good in their new dress versus slipping a “little extra” into their wallet because they worked overtime and feel they deserve the “bonus”. These two scenarios are on equally opposite ends of the unethical spectrum, yet they resonate in the workplace in varying degrees every day. Applicants who undergo a thorough employment background screening are being caught in resume lies more often than at any prior time in history.

So, why are we lying more today than ever before? According to Ira S. Wolfe in his July 2004 article titled Cheating, Lies, and Other Workplace Ethics, “People cheat today because they simply cannot get everything done which needs to be done.” Cheating on our resumes to appear better than we are, helping ourselves to more salary than we have been granted…these are examples of poor ethics that have infiltrated our workplaces and have raised major concerns for employers. Hiring managers are likely not seeing the “real” applicants when they look at a resume or speak to them in interviews. The “real” person is insecurely waiting inside so they can come out once it’s safe and they’ve been hired.

This is a dangerous trend, not only because of the principle that lying is wrong; in the workplace, people can truly be hurt by it. Take the ex-felon, Dr. Michael Swango, as an example. His prior stint in prison for poisoning his co-workers didn’t stop him from getting hired at other out of state hospitals where he promptly killed dozens of his patients (hence, his nickname “00 Swango, License to Kill”). When patients’ lives are at stake, hospitals need to be extremely vigilant in hiring only those medical staff that have successfully passed a rigorous employment background screening and have shown that they do not engage in telling resume lies to help them get hired.

Another reason that people cheat, according to Wolfe, is that we are being brought up in a world where we are taught that we can have anything we want. If nothing “is outside our reach” as he states it, then we do whatever it takes to conform to that expectation and illusion. For many employees who have been hired although they do not have the skills and qualifications required to perform their job duties satisfactorily, this delusion has overtaken their ethics. It speaks volumes about someone’s lack of ethics when they feel comfortable enough to lie on a resume about a degree that was never earned, a job that they never had, or about skills they do not possess. Unfortunately, this is where employment background screening can help. No one can debate the true facts…and that’s what you’ll get with employment screening services.

So, whether trying to uncover resume lies while looking for a potential candidate or whether running an employment check on someone who seems like the perfect fit for the job, always check your applicants’ ethics by employing the services of an experienced employment background screening company like Accu-Screen.