A third (35%) of discrepancies in CVs came from 25- to 32-year-olds, making this the most common age group to lie on their CV.
Risk Advisory Group head of employee screening Michael Whittington said: “In today’s digital world we share more information about ourselves online than ever before – yet our analysis shows this is not stopping people being economical with the truth when they are hunting for jobs.
“Recruiting from an increasingly global talent pool just exacerbates the problem by making it even more difficult to get the information you need to verify a candidate’s background, with a lot of data not readily available.”
More than a quarter (26%) of CVs analysed contained mistakes in academic background and 35% contained discrepancies about employment history.
The report also found 12% of candidates inflated their job titles in an attempt to climb the career ladder, replacing titles such as ‘graduate’ or ‘intern’ with ‘manager’ or ‘supervisor’.
Whittington said a “bad hire” could be a costly mistake for business. He pointed to CIPD research that revealed recruiting the wrong person can cost as much as £12,000 for senior managers or directors. He added it also wasted time and could be damaging to the business’s reputation.
“That’s why we urge companies to balance the need to hire quickly with the need to validate the credentials of who they are hiring,” said Whittington.
“Too much automation in employee screening processes can mean that critical details and discrepancies are missed. There really is no substitute for human insight and analysis to check that candidates’ CVs match the reality.”
