Pre-employment screening specialists Powerchex looked through the details of almost 6,000 applications made over the past 12 months to the financial services sector for its annual research into CV embellishments.
It found that while the number of CVs containing a serious untruth or embellishment decreased this year to 15% - a drop of around 4% - the number of applications containing hidden criminal records had trebled as a proportion of total discrepancies. One in every 200 successful applications to roles in financial services had been falsified to hide a criminal conviction.
Alexandra Kelly, director, Powerchex, said: "That the overall proportion of CV and job applications containing embellishments fell is extremely encouraging... However, this is overshadowed by increases in the most worrying types of discrepancies, namely hidden convictions and undisclosed CCJs/bankruptcies. Both of these are of major concern to financial companies ... and might expose their prospective employer to opportunistic or even malicious fraud."
