Some job hunters are not merely enhancing their education credentials but fabricating new employment histories, licenses and job references on their resumes.
The rise in résumé fraud can be traced to unemployment and underemployment, coupled with tough competition in the labor market.
Resume fraud is a legal issue as to obtain a job and thereby monies using false or fraudulent information, is a crime and one can be charged under any number of Acts including the Crimes Act.
The recent sacking and police charges against former Myer executive, Andrew Flanagan, for alleged resume fraud, is a timely reminder that lying to get a job does not pay.
Some areas of resume fraud include:
- Stating false educational qualifications, such as citing unearned post graduate degrees
- Stretching employment dates to cover periods of unemployment
- Inflating past accomplishments, such as single handedly achieving a KPI when it was reached through a team effort
- Enhancing job titles and responsibilities, for example, by claiming one was a director when in truth, you were an office manager
- Providing fraudulent references by co-opting friends outside of the organisation, to give glowing work assessments
The Trade Practices Act effectively says that if a recruiter proposes a ‘dodgy candidate’ without conducting due diligence on their resume, then they too they may be involved in deceptive or misleading conduct.
As a professional resume writer, I occasionally see people trying to ‘gild the lily’, but I remind them that a resume is a legal document and fraud is treated harshly.
In the USA there are even websites designed to aid occupational fraud by providing job seekers, for a fee, with a 1-800 number. When a prospective employer calls the number, they are provided with a glowing recommendation of the applicant.
A resume is a specialist form of career autobiography and marketing document. It shows not only what you have done but also indicates potential.
Employers are always looking for a “champion”. It’s the desire to believe the candidate – to think well of them and not conduct background checks – that is their undoing.
This is from the ABC in 2022
“There’s a clear point at which an embellished resume ventures into criminal territory.
When medical student Zhi Sin Lee applied for an intern position while completing her final year, she wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. But when she failed the last year of her medical degree, she decided to lie about her qualifications.
She accepted a job with Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney and she commenced work as an intern there in January 2021 and worked there before it was discovered that she hadn’t successfully completed a medical degree.
She was fined $10,000 and given a large community service order.
Lee narrowly avoided going to prison.
But UK-born former West Australian state Labour politician Barry Urban was not so lucky. Since November last year, he’s been behind bars.
Urban entered the Western Australian police force in 2005 before moving into parliament in 2017. He’s since been convicted of a number of counts of forgery in relation to the academic degrees that he proffered in his applications to become a police officer.
In lying about his qualifications in this way, Urban committed the crime of forgery.
Investigation by a news reporter led to Urban appearing before a parliamentary committee, where he doubled down on his forgeries. In doing so he committed a specific offence in WA law – that of giving false evidence before Parliament.
That’s a crime punishable by imprisonment for up to seven years. Urban was ultimately sentenced to three years’ jail.
Lying about your Microsoft Word proficiency or concocting a minor, internet-based qualification is a lesser offence that’s probably not as big an issue in a criminal sentencing situation.
But deception which has the ability to affect somebody’s health or life is obviously one of the most significant sorts of frauds you can commit.
Attaching a fake reference or qualification to your CV is forgery.
It’s never worth lying in a CV because it’s an unexploded bomb – you don’t know when it will ever explode and you don’t know the implications. So it’s always better to be honest, and to try and charm people in the interview.”