Resume Falsification

When Your Worst Nightmare Becomes Reality with a New Hire

After poring over resume after resume, weeding out the unqualified folks, you find out that the 3 candidates you’ve selected all have fluffed their self-proclaimed skill set and experience with resume lies and resume falsification. What’s worse is when you miss that step altogether and hire them. At best, you may have hired an unqualified person who will make mistakes and end up being fired. At worst, you may have inadvertently hired a dangerous criminal whose malicious intentions are aimed for your company, your customers, and your employees.

The trend that companies are seeing right now, especially small businesses is one of great financial and legal loss due to poor hiring practices. This economy has placed constraints on everyone’s resources, employers and job seekers alike. For the employer, sometimes a job position suddenly opens up and needs to be filled in short order. The temptation can be to fill the position too quickly because one candidate stands out above the rest. If a resume looks good on paper, the applicant must be qualified…right? Not necessarily so.

Resume falsification is one of the trickiest things to catch if you don’t who to turn to for deciphering. Sure, you can sometimes tell when someone is lying because their story doesn’t match or they are unable to provide consistent information during an interview. But, what are you supposed to look for…really? Enter an employment background screening service like AccuScreen.

This type of employment screening goes much further than the everyday reference check and verifying places of employment. This service looks deep into the applicant’s past and uncovers facts that they may not have been truthful about. Truths that can be hidden from view include the school they attended, whether they earned a degree, their salary history, criminal record, job titles held, and much more. Drug testing results, business ownership, driving records, tax liens, and lawsuits can also be included in the background search.

In a survey that was conducted by a major payroll company last year, it was found that businesses had suffered about $10,000 in losses for each employee that was hired and underperformed or made gross errors. These dollars lost, in this economy, can add up to huge losses as company size increases. Major contributors to these losses include high turnover, wasted time in recruitment and training, as well as underperformance and lost business caused by these types of employees.

For small businesses, one single loss of $10,000 can have a huge impact on their bottom line. When companies are struggling just to survive in these economic times, it’s nearly deadly to their company to hire the wrong person. The right way to proceed for any company, whether they are large or small, is to prescreen employees through employment background screening. Catch the resume lies before you hire so you don’t lose out on more than you bargained for!