Candidates resort to lying on CVs

By Rob Virtue on September 22, 2009 3:03 PM |

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The recession and growing unemployment is causing more and more young people to lie on their job applications.

That's the view of Powerchex, a Wapping-based pre-employment screening company, which carried out a survey of more than 4,700 CVs between June last year and May this year.

It found that 19 per cent of the applications contained inaccuracies and the biggest jump since last year was the under-21s - who a year ago were the most truthful.

Powerchex's managing director Alexandra Kelly said that with 970,000 young people reported to be unemployed she believes the pressure is mounting on today's youth.

She said: "This is the second year in a row that there has been an increase in the number of candidates lying to recruiters.

"The pressure of the recession on job markets seems to have led more applicants to believe they should lie or make embellished claims to obtain jobs.

"It's unfortunate to see that more young people are reacting to the pressure in this way.

"Their socio-economic group has been one of the hardest hit."

While under-21s had the largest jump, the Powerchex survey found that 41- to 51-year-olds were most likely to lie, with 25 per cent of their CVs containing discrepancies.

The most common discrepancy was in employment dates, which at 42 per cent of the inaccuracies is actually five per cent lower than last year.

Another startling fact was that brokers have a disproportionately large number of candidates hiding criminal records.