简历造假有增无减

    有一名求职者把他父亲的经历放在自己的简历中（父子姓名相同）。另一名求职者声称自己是施工监理，但是经过仔细研究发现，他唯一的施工经历是搭建后院的狗窝。另外，还有一名求职者自称曾任首相助理，而他所说的那个国家中根本就没有首相一职。

    这只是2,000多名招聘主管近期在接受招聘网站凯业必达（CareerBuilder.com）调查时给出的一小部分案例。58%的受访者表示，他们曾经发现夸大甚至完全伪造的简历，而1/3（33%）的受访者表示，自经济衰退以来，这种情况愈演愈烈。

    招聘人员发现造假简历最多的行业如下：金融服务业（73%）、休闲旅游业（71%）。信息技术和医疗卫生行业占比均为63%，并列第三位。

    读者们可能认为，在应征高管职位的求职者中，简历造假现象不太常见——因为如果被发现，他们的损失会更大——但事实并非如此。由于高管通常比普通职员接受更多的现场面试，实际上他们凭借领袖气质更容易被录用。

    “应聘高管职位的求职者常常接受多位招聘官的面试，而招聘官会在面试后互相讨论求职者有多优秀和出色。”人力资源咨询公司CBIZ Human Capital Services的总裁杰伊•梅施克表示，“到你接受第四位或第五位面试官的面试时，他们通常已经决定录用你了。同时，面试官不会非常认真地阅读你的简历，或者压根就不看你的简历。”

    梅施克曾经无数次目睹了这种现象。“我们发现，即便是应聘最高管理层的求职者，也会在简历中提到获得了某某商学院的MBA学位，而事实上他们只是参加了为期两周的管理专题讲座。”他表示。例如，一家医疗保健公司准备招聘一位高管，这名高管拥有15年在大型医院连锁机构担任首席财务官的经验。最后，CBIZ的招聘人员发现，这名求职者没有所谓的MBA学历，甚至也没有学士学位。

    另外，职务也是一个棘手的问题。“有时，求职者表示曾任某大型公司财务主管，其实他只是某个部门的审计员。”梅施克表示。在接受凯业必达调查的招聘主管中，约34%的受访者表示曾发现虚假或夸大的职务。

    即便如此，凯业必达的调查表明，虽然简历造假引起的怀疑有所增加，但是受重视程度远远不够。去年12月，只有33%的招聘主管在接受凯业必达的调查时表示，他们用“两分钟以上”的时间阅读一份简历。现在，有42%（仍不足半数）的受访者做出同样的表示。

    梅施克表示，对于愿意花时间看简历的招聘官来说，发现简历造假的现象并非难事。首先，他建议检查求职者的简历信息是否与他/她在商务社交网站领英（LinkedIn）的资料相符。“发现不一致信息也不足为奇。”他表示。之后，可以利用谷歌（Google）搜索查看前几页的内容。梅施克的团队最近审查了一名应聘首席运营官的求职者，“在10-15页中发现了巨大差异。”他表示。

    另外，审查求职者的所有证明，或请背景调查机构开展调查，审查除求职者提供的证明以外的资料，约谈能（或不能）为求职者诚信提供担保的公司或业内其他人员，这些都是不错的做法。

    “关键在于投入时间开展调查。”梅施克表示。经历或学历造假的求职者，仍有可能具备完美的能力，例如上文提出的医院首席财务官。他补充道：“但是诚信决定一切。如果他们在简历中说谎，在实际工作中又会怎样呢？”（财富中文网）

    翻译：乔树静/汪皓

    One applicant put experience on his resume that was actually his father’s. (They both had the same name—one Senior, the other Junior.) Another claimed to have been a construction supervisor, but further digging revealed that his only construction experience was building a backyard doghouse. And then there was the candidate who claimed to have been the assistant to the prime minister, in a country that has no prime minister.

    That’s just a small sampling of tales from more than 2,000 hiring managers in a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com. In all, 58% said they had spotted exaggerations or outright fabrications on resumes, and one in three (33%) said the problem has grown worse since the recession.

    The industry where interviewers have discovered the most phony claims on resumes: financial services (73%), followed by leisure and hospitality (71%). Information technology and health care, both at 63%, tied for third place.

    You might think that resume fakery is less common among candidates for senior management jobs—if only because they have further to fall if they’re found out—but no. Because executives are usually subject to more in-person interviews than the rank and file, it’s actually easier for them to rely on charisma to charm their way in.

    “At the executive level, someone is usually interviewed by a series of people, who all talk to each other after they meet you about how dynamic and wonderful you are,” explains Jay Meschke, president of recruiters and HR consultants CBIZ Human Capital Services. “By the time you get to the fourth or fifth interviewer, often that person is already convinced they want you. Meanwhile, no one has really read your resume very carefully. Or at all.”

    Meschke has seen this phenomenon more times than he can count. “Even at the C-suite level, we’ve seen people put an MBA from a certain B-school on their resume when what they really did was attend a two-week management seminar there,” he says. In one case, a health care company was set to hire an executive who had been CFO at a major hospital chain for 15 years—until a CBIZ recruiter discovered the candidate had neither an MBA, as claimed, nor even a bachelor’s degree.

    Titles can be tricky, too. “Sometimes people will say they were head of finance for a big company, when really they were comptroller of a division of it,” says Meschke. About 34% of the hiring managers in CareerBuilder’s poll said they’d seen fictitious or exaggerated titles.

    Even so, the CareerBuilder survey suggests that skepticism is increasing, but not by much. Last December, just 33% of hiring managers told CareerBuilder they spent “more than two minutes” reading each resume. Now, 42%—still fewer than half—say they do.

    For anybody willing to take the time, Meschke says spotting untruths and embellishments isn’t difficult. First, he recommends checking to see whether someone’s resume matches his or her LinkedIn profile. “It’s not uncommon to find inconsistencies,” he says. Then, do a Google search that goes past the first couple of pages. Meschke’s team recently vetted a candidate for a chief operating officer position and found “serious discrepancies 10 or 15 pages in,” he says.

    It’s also a good idea to check all references, or have a reference-checking service do it, and even go beyond the ones the candidate has given, to speak with others in the company or the industry who can vouch (or not) for the candidate’s bona fides.

    “The main thing is to take the time to investigate,” Meschke says. A candidate who has misstated experience or credentials, like the erstwhile hospital CFO, might still be perfectly capable, he adds, “but it boils down to credibility. If they’re going to lie on a resume, what will they do on the job?”