Employer beware! There are fraudulent resumes afoot.

• Author: Cummings, Judith
• Position: HUMAN RESOURCES

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This article is the first of two articles on challenges facing employers to ensure that the applicant they select for a job is really who they are led to believe they are. This month, we will look at the issue of resume fraud. Next month, the methods an employer can use to verify the education, skills and experience claims of job applicant will be discussed.

For 28 years, Marilee Jones served in the admissions office for the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She rose from being an entry-level admissions officer in 1979, to being named dean of admissions in 1998, to gaining national acclaim as co-author of the book "Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond."

The experience, knowledge and credentials she earned during those years were impressive. What she did not have, however, were the credentials she claimed when she applied for that first admissions job in 1979. She had lied on her resume about her education--inflating a degree from an obscure local college to having three college degrees from nationally known schools. When the truth was discovered in 2007, she resigned.

If a job applicant can bamboozle an institution like MIT, what are the chances of a typical employer encountering resume fraud when considering job candidates? Unfortunately the chances are pretty good, according to the results reported by Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) in its 2008 reference screening report. ADP Screening and Selection Services completed almost half a million reference checks in 2007 and found more than 45 percent contained discrepancies between what the applicant claimed in education, experience or professional credentials compared to actual records. In checking criminal history of applicants, ADP found that 6 percent had a criminal record from the previous seven years.

Resume fraud includes making false or misleading statements or omitting significant details about background or education. The most common areas for fraud on a resume are:

11 Enhancing past accomplishments and/or acquired skills: Candidates claim to have managed projects in which they were not involved or inflate the importance of the accomplishment. Sometimes, the project or accomplishment is completely fictitious. One of the most common misstatements is in the skills the candidate possesses. They may claim proficiency in computer systems to get the job, but are wholly...