Don’t judge a recruit by their CV Without conducting all the checks, companies may not get what they see on résumés Carly Chynoweth Published: 12 October 2014
Wendy Somerville, HR director at the solicitor Pitmans, said that even professional services firms should not take candidates at their word (Akira Suemori)
David Hutchinson is no longer surprised when background checks on senior job candidates find skeletons that should have emerged from the cupboard years before. Far too many organisations simply assume that applicants were screened when they got their previous job, and therefore do not need to be checked again. This means that all it takes to “launder” a questionable CV is one job with a reputable company, Hutchinson said. “If a candidate can get away with something once, the next employer will think, ‘Oh, he worked at such and such company, they will have checked. He looks good, we’ll take him’,” said Hutchinson, managing director of PeopleCheck, which conducts background reviews.
“We found a guy in a senior compliance position who had worked for three large banks, but when we ran the check we found that he had a conviction for fraud and had been to prison.” A little more checking uncovered the fact that he had managed to bluff his way through a previous company’s recruitment screening because he was “a shouter”. “They are people who shout and scream and say that there is no need for them to be screened. And if you don’t take a strong position, the employer backs down and they get through,” Hutchinson said. Not all shouters will be trying to bully their way past a problem but about 80% of the time the checks uncover something negative, he added. Other applicants with something to hide simply delay the process as long as possible in the hope that the employer will let them start the job without it and then fail to follow it up. Some employers make things even easier by simply trusting their instincts, said Geoff Trickey, managing director of Psychological Consultancy and a member of the Institute of Risk Management. “People have an unrealistic faith in their own ability to judge people,” he said. “This means that when interviewers find someone they like, who is their preferred candidate, they are much more casual about whether they will follow up with checks or second opinions. “It is quite common then for people not to do checks because when you have been through the process you can visualise the person in the role.” This is one reason why Trickey suggests that background screening is done before candidates are shortlisted, rather than after, if the organisation does not make all offers of employment conditional upon a satisfactory check. Simply stating this upfront should dissuade most applicants from misrepresenting themselves, he said, and can help to overcome any awkwardness on the employer’s part about raising the issue with candidates. “Sometimes companies get embarrassed asking about this, but individuals don’t mind,” said Steve Pratt, the interim HR director at Swinton Insurance. “It is becoming the norm and it is perceived as good practice.” Hiring managers often worry that the process will delay recruitment, but doing it online can take as little as three or four days, provided the candidate plays his or her part. “We have the process set up so that the emphasis is on the individual to complete the application online, which makes it much faster and more efficient. We do have people say they haven’t had a chance to get round to it yet, so we go back to them and say we won’t be able to proceed with their application unless they do it. That puts the onus back on them.” Many companies with solid screening programmes for employees do not bother to screen contract staff. This gives potential wrongdoers an unlocked back door into the business, Hutchinson said. Everyone with access to significant amounts of confidential information should be checked, from receptionists to senior managers, said Clive Bonny, the founder of the consultancy Strategic Management Partners. “The increasing accessibility of technology means that most commercial organisations are at a significantly increased risk when their staff are dealing with information. There is a lot of theft of information and intellectual property in commercial organisations and many are not aware of the degree of theft taking place until it is too late.” Bonny said internal promotions should involve checks, too. “Organisations rarely do this. It is a significant blind spot. But if, for instance, you are restructuring your finance department and a manager takes on a directorship, that should require further checks on that person’s ability to hold information.”
Business intelligence reports are another useful way to build knowledge about senior hirings. Comparing company performance and candidates’ claims may uncover discrepancies, said David Knowles of the information provider Creditsafe. “We found one supply chain manager claiming to manage a budget greater than the company’s turnover,” he said. “And if someone is a company direc- tor you can track their history through other organisations, look at the credit rating when they arrived and when they left, and identify any patterns.”
Even lawyers fake it Professional services firms cannot afford not to check candidates’ qualifications, said Wendy Somerville, HR director at the solicitor Pitmans. “Once we interviewed a person who had an amazing CV, so they got through to the second interview,” she said. “Everyone thought ‘we have the right candidate’ – the personality match was great. We were about to offer the job, so I started doing employment checks.” Her first call was to the university from which the candidate claimed to have gained a master’s degree — but hadn’t. She then checked the undergraduate degree, and drew another blank. The candidate was highly convincing and without proper background checks could have been offered the role as head of department. “This person had entirely made up the master’s and the degree. They could have joined in a position they were not qualified for. It shows that doing this sort of due diligence is vital.”