Little White Lies

Every company performs some level of due diligence on the people they hire. Whether the HR person does this themselves or hires a 3rd party to conduct a formal background check, count on everything you say to be double checked.

Know that any informational discrepancy could cost you the job, even if it involves something very minor or ends up being a completely innocent misunderstanding. So always apply the "background check" factor to every aspect of your job search (writing your resume, answering questions during the interview, filling out a job application, etc..) to avoid this problem.

Long gone are the days when companies relied solely on their good instincts to make a hiring decision. Too much is at risk nowadays with the access employees have to key personnel, valuable equipment and confidential information. A new hire carries enormous liability considering the financial or cultural damage they could cause through their misconduct or incompetence. So understand why companies do this kind of stuff and don't take it personally.

You may think this post doesn't apply to you since you probably do not consider yourself to be a blatant liar. However, pay attention! Offers can get pulled at the last minute or rescinded after the fact because of fairly innocent discrepancies or miscommunication. And once a candidate gets earmarked with a "red flag", some companies, in the interest of saving time, just decide to cut cord and move to the next candidate. Don't let this happen to you!

Keep in mind that you could end up divulging a piece of problematic information via your resume, a job application or even through something you say during the interview. So be mindful in all three instances. To help, here's a good checklist of where you could mistakenly misrepresent something and have a background check pull this up as a problem with your application:

• Employment Dates: Don't Guess! Research the exact dates of your employment. Also, always use months (not days) to give yourself some wiggle room on accuracy.
• Education: List the name of the school as it was when you actually attended it. If the school has changed names since then, put the new name in parenthesis next to this. Also, be clear on whether or not you have graduated. You may actually have to check since some schools will withhold degrees if students still owe payments to the school. Simply put either "attending" for pending degrees and "completed or graduated" where this applies. Also, list the specifics of the degree accurately and only list your GPA if you are 100% sure this correct.
• Certifications: Same rules apply. A common issue here is with people preemptively claiming a completion. Don't put that you have completed a certification because you are really close and expect it to come through in the next few weeks. Simply put "anticipated completion 8/08".
• Reason for Leaving: Regardless of what YOU think, you have to represent this the same way as the company has this documented, "quit/resigned" or "fired/ let go" or "laid off/ company downsizing". be exact and consistent with HR and, remember, you'll have an opportunity to tell your side of the story. If you say you "quit" and HR says you were "fired", this is going to reflect poorly on you.
• Current Salary Compensation: This is another common issue with misrepresentation. Candidates often try to add their bonus and any other type of additional income into their stated base salary in hopes that this will elevate the offer they get. Of course they are going to check this! And not only will you come off as a little "shady", but this could be a serious enough discrepancy to take you out of consideration.
• Under-the-table Positions: Leave these off your resume altogether. If you include them, a background check will not be able to verify them since their are no tax records. It also isn't a great idea to advertise that you don't pay taxes on your income.
• Title: It is completely understandable that you would want to use the title that most accurately portrays what you do or how people refer to you at your current company. However, you must list your title the exact same way that HR has this listed. It may not be easy to explain that the nature of your role may be different than what your title indicates. But you'll have a much tougher time explaining why you appear to be lying about your job title.
  
• Contact Information: A lot of times people provide outdated addresses, phone numbers and contact people for prior employers and/or references. This could happen if the company moved, changed names or if the contact person has switched jobs. Always double check this information before submitting it or else a background check could determine that no such company/ person exists.
• Internships/ Volunteer: Label as such and clarify that these are  not compensated work positions so that the background check does not pull this back as a job with no record of employment.

Comments

[Steven]

It seems there has been a lot of talk about employers no longer posting on sites that charge a fee to post like Monster or careerbuilder. See one argument here:

http://www.therecruiterslounge.com/2008/07/17/pay-to-post-verses-pay-for-performance/

Where do you see job postings moving over the next 2 years?

Hi Steve,
Read my post on job boards:

http://jobious.typepad.com/advice/2007/04/job_boards_are_.html

You are right that things are changing. An example is the job aggregator category with sites like Indeed and Simply hired which are free. I believe self-publishing jobs is the new direction that employers will move in with postings as soon as we can all let go of our security blankets (Monster, careerbuilder, etc..). The savvy candidate needs to know where all these new job board portals are. New ones pop up constantly. If you hear of any good ones that I haven't listed. Let me know!!

All the best
beth