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How 'CV Embellishment' impacts the Recruitment Process

A little white lie never hurt anyone, right? When it comes to the employment process, they can cause major damage.

A shocking 92.5% of British workers admit ‘embellishing’ their skills and including an exaggeration or two during the application process, despite 90.5% of workers believing it is wrong to deceive their potential employers.

This rise in false claims within CV’s causes great inconvenience, lost time and costly hiring errors for employers, yet research found nearly 71.6% of British workers admit they did in fact get their job as a result of a lie.

Steve Girdler, Managing Director EMEA at HireRight, states “businesses are increasingly seeing [screening’s] intrinsic value with discrepancies continuing to be identified at all candidate levels of seniority – from entry to Board room level”.

 ‘Embellished CV’s’ are most common within:

Finance: 85% of financial services HR and risk professionals have experienced candidates presenting false information on their CVs or on job applications.

Senior Level roles: 31% of issues were found during senior-level background screening.

Common lies on CV’s include:

  • Dates of employment
  • Work experience
  • Salaries (in an attempt to secure a higher one)
  • False academic degrees and other credentials

What do our consultants at Hewett Recruitment do to remain diligent during the screening process?

Hewett Recruitment continuously strive to achieve excellence, putting our candidates and clients at the centre of all we do. Therefore, following our strong values of integrity, our dedicated, specialist consultants take great care in thoroughly screening each applicant to ensure we place the most suitably qualified and experienced candidates with our clients.

Director Ben Mannion states “the screening and selection process is an essential part of the service we provide to our clients. From online assessments to establish skill levels in data entry or with software packages such as Excel…through to testing skills levels with specific programming languages for software developers and checking candidate references, it allows us to put forward candidates for roles with confidence. Furthermore, the interview process plays a key role in assessing someone’s suitability for the environment and culture of the business we are recruiting for and this “person fit” is just as important as having the right technical skills for a requirement.”

We remain vigilant when it comes to vetting and assessing applicants to ensure we provide the very best talent.

For more information, contact us on 01562 69090 or visit our ‘meet the team’ page to contact our industry specialists.