How much do applicants fib?
Your mother may have told you not to lie, but evidently some of the people sending out resumes never got that good advice. Several surveys indicate that lots of people lie when they apply for a job.
One screening service used by employers reports that in 2006, 41 percent of their background checks turned up a discrepancy between what the applicant provided and what the reference reported. Another report, by a different company, found “major misstatements” on 42 percent of the resumes.
More than half the hiring managers polled by CareerBuilder said they found a lie on an application. Of course, only 5 percent of the applicants admitted to falsifying information, though, in another survey, about half admitted to “resume padding.”
If those figures are accurate, then almost half the resumes you receive will have factual errors on them. That’s reason enough to check references and backgrounds.
Applicants lie about a lot of things. According to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the most common “fibs” were the following.
- Inflated titles
- Inaccurate dates to cover up job hopping or gaps in employment
- Partially finished degrees presented as completed
- Inflated education or “purchased” degrees that do not mean anything
- Inflated salaries
- Inflated accomplishments
- Out and out lies about specific roles and duties
The bottom line is that applicants fib a lot. Many of them may not understand the difference between “presenting themselves in the best light” and lying. But that’s no excuse.
And some are hiding something serious they don’t want you to know about, like a criminal […]
One more way your rental property can get trashed
After telling the story of Jason Winterholler, the Austin American-Statesman offers up the following: “Police said homeowners should do credit and criminal background checks on prospective tenants. They also warned owners to be skeptical of overly favorable deals and resist the urge to skip background checks just because the prospective renters seem nice.”
That advice will seem pretty straightforward to most landlords, even if sometimes it takes a lot of discipline to follow it. There are two things different here from the usual story of this kind. First, this advice is aimed at homeowners who attempt to rent out a property because they can’t sell it.
Most landlords got into the property renting business on purpose. But because of the current housing crisis, we’re suddenly seeing more “accidental landlords,” people who can’t sell their house and figure that renting it would be an option that generates some revenue.
That was Jason Winterholler’s situation. He needed to move to Pasadena from Phoenix in order to take a new job. He tried to sell his house, but the housing market was in the tank, so he decided to rent it out for a while.
He had trouble finding tenants at the rent he wanted, so he was thrilled when a couple showed up who didn’t haggle over the rent and paid the deposit in cash. He took off for his new job feeling like he was lucky. Far from it. It turns out that the couple was up to no good and Jason’s house got […]
Stopping financial misconduct with a multi-layered program
The Columbia (MO) Tribune has a story about how the University of Missouri is working to stop fiscal misconduct with a multi-layered program that even involves the public. The story focuses on the new fraud reporting hotline as well as other techniques like increased background checks. Let’s review what’s going on and how you can learn from it.
The University is trying to curb and catch “financial misconduct.” That phrase covers a number of offenses. They include theft and fraud, of course, but also statements or actions that violate internal financial policies, unlawful gifts, bribes, misuse of funds under grants or contracts, and, in some cases, the destruction of financial documents.
The tip line will be outsourced and it’s only one of a number of actions that the University is taking. They’re paying more attention to who they hire, for example.
The University has done pre-employment background checks for some time, but only for offenses committed in Missouri. Now they’ll be doing a national criminal background check as well as reviewing the Missouri Sex Offender Registry.
Also new is the policy of doing background checks on faculty. Before, only staff members were investigated and faculty members were, in essence, deemed to be above suspicion.
Staff will now be investigated as part of the hiring process, just like before. But they’ll also be subject to scrutiny when they are promoted or transferred outside their department.
Even though the tip line is getting most of the press, it the background checking that will be most effective in […]
Sometimes all you can do is chuckle: Wikipedia
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that purports to know about almost everything, seems to have missed important information about one of its own. The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit arm of Wikipedia.
The Foundation’s now-former COO, Carolyn Bothwell Doran was originally hired after being sent over as a part-time bookkeeper by a temp agency. It’s not clear how she rose to the COO position.
As COO, Doran was responsible for personnel management, with access to sensitive personal information. She was responsible for financial management with access to financial records. She prepared and filed the foundation’s tax return. That’s the kind of person you want to be able to trust.
But Doran had a secret. Actually, she had several secrets.
She was on probation for a 2004 hit-and-run accident. She served seven months in jail for that one, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. Doran also had multiple drunken-driving convictions, and a record that included theft, writing bad checks and wounding her boyfriend with a gunshot to the chest.
Well, Wikipedia has since fired her. The web site profy.com reports on the reaction of Wikipedia founder Jimmie Wales and adds their own acerbic comment on the benefits of background checks.
Wales’ message to the Wikipedia community was laughable:
“We are very saddened and hurt by these shocking revelations. Of course we are doing soul searching about what we could have done different.”
Soul searching? How about a simple background check?
Take the following bits of wisdom away from this. Bit number one: even really smart […]
We’re going to evacuate you, but first …
During the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, lots of criminals wound up among good people on buses and in shelters. Still others used the occasion as an opportunity to get out of town and not come back. In Texas they think they have a solution for both those problems.
The Houston Chronicle story headlined: “Next time, evacuees subject to criminal checks,” leads with the following. “Texans seeking to escape the next hurricane or state emergency by evacuation bus will first be submitted to criminal background checks, the state’s emergency management director says.”
There are several different ways you might want to respond to this story. One is to imagine a rank of buses with signs on them. “Special Needs” one might say. Another bus would be marked for “The Elderly.” And there would be a bus for “Criminals, Parolees, and Other Evil Doers.”
That was my first reaction. I imagined a scene like a giant school field trip, but with different signs on the buses. Then, I got to thinking about how all this was going to work
I like the intent of what Texas wants to do. The idea is to keep vulnerable people like children, the disabled, and the elderly safe from predators. Fair enough. But how’s it going to work in practice? Let’s consider the details.
ATT has contracted with the state to create a system that will provide scannable wristbands for evacuees. Identification information will be entered at the evacuation assembly point. The wristbands will be scanned when a […]
SAT scores, transcript, background check
I’ve got a nephew who’s going to college with the help of several scholarships. Those scholarships are contingent on good behavior. If he gets arrested for something like underage drinking, for example, his scholarships can be pulled. Many colleges have similar policies.
Now some college administrators are thinking about criminal background checks as part of the admissions process. KHTV in Little Rock, Arkansas, reports that “What you do as a kid could soon determine your future. Because of violent incidents, like the Virginia Tech shootings, some colleges and universities are considering adding background checks to the admission process. And even non-criminal offenses may come up in determining scholarship awards.”
Today many colleges ask applicants about past misbehavior. It’s all on the honor system, though because nobody checks what the applicants tell them.
Most of the people applying to college out of high school are sixteen or seventeen years old. In most states, according to Traci Truly in her Legal Guide for Teens, the age at which you are tried as an adult is either seventeen or eighteen. Whatever legal troubles most applicants have had was handled under the juvenile justice system and the records are likely to be sealed.
But before you let your teen breathe a sigh of relief, consider this. If the background check turns up the fact of a juvenile record, the college can ask for details as a condition of continuing the application or scholarship award process. The college can also make lying on the application for admission or […]