Doing background checks on potential employees has become important in South Africa in recent months. We've rounded up the most lied about sections on job applicants' CVs.
Background screening companies have released some stats about the prevalence of CV fraud in South Africa. Refcheck Advanced and EMPS have shown that South African job seekers are not always a truthful bunch.
It appears that job candidates lie about their credentials more than ever before. And these are the sections they fabricate the most:
Tertiary Qualifications
- 7.6% of tertiary qualifications submitted to EMPS for verification in the first half of 2015 were unverifiable.
- Some of these qualifications couldn’t be verified because the institutions don’t exist anymore.
- Sometimes the institutions listed on CVs have not kept accurate records of their students, which created issues in the verification process.
- There were even candidates that bought their qualifications from so-called degree mills in various parts of the world.
Matric Certificate
- A lot of these certificates were really from the Department of Education but their symbols and subjects have been altered to look better.
- Plenty candidates also changed the name of the subjects they matriculated with by replacing it with more impressive subjects like Maths and Science.
- Refcheck Advanced couldn’t confirm the authenticity of 25% of the candidates’ matric certificates in 2014.
Previous employment
Job seekers tend to:
- fake employment certificates,
- provide incorrect past roles and responsibilities,
- inflate former job titles,
- provide false reasons for wanting to change jobs,
- exaggerate their previous salary figure.
Consequences of a bad hire:
It is advised that employers do careful background checks to avoid hiring the wrong candidates. Hiring a candidate that is not properly qualified will mean that they won’t be efficient, your productivity will suffer and you may suffer financial losses too.
Do you really want a liar working for you? Find great candidates with Careers24 Recruiters.
