Sun, Apr 23, 2006 page12

• Job applicants turn to the big lie in quest for work

  Many applicants get away with phony resume details, and some companies are turning to professionals to weed them out

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Lying on a resume to enhance a mediocre educational or employment record is hardly new. But several recent surveys, as well as anecdotal reports from hiring managers and recruiters, indicate that resume falsehoods are on the rise and are just as likely to come from high-profile chief executives as recent college graduates.

  A Brooklyn administrative assistant was recently caught turning a two-day stint as an office temp into an 18-month job as a data entry operator. The fabrication was discovered when the applicant sent her resume to Margaret Johnson, director of operations for MetSchools, an organization that serves children in New York City with special needs.

  On her resume, the applicant asserted that from 2000 to 2002 she was employed by Women for Hire, a Manhattan-based organization that coordinates job fairs around the country -- and whose chief executive, coincidentally, is Johnson's sister-in-law, Tory Johnson.

  "She immediately called me to ask what I had to say about this woman, and I said I never heard of her," Tory Johnson said. "I was stunned by her arrogance."

  The applicant received a pointed e-mail retort from Margaret Johnson.

  Misrepresentations like this are increasingly common, job experts say. A study conducted by ResumeDoctor.com, a resume-writing service based in Burlington, Vermont, found that 43 percent of the more than 1,100 resumes examined had one or more "significant inaccuracies," while 13 percent had two or more.

  Michael Worthington, the co-founder of ResumeDoctor, said the most common transgressions could be found in three areas: education, job title and dates of employment.

  Worthington and other job experts insist that job seekers can sell themselves successfully without exaggeration and half-truths. Gaps in employment, both short-term and long-term, can be more easily explained than in the past, he said. Losing a job to downsizing or layoffs has less of a stigma, and many employers are more sympathetic to time off taken for personal and family reasons.

  Job candidates who have not graduated from college or completed work toward a higher degree should not try to fudge it, the experts say. A resume should indicate if applicants are a few credits short and when and if they plan to complete the degree.

  Some job seekers claim job titles they never had, even though they performed many of the duties the title suggests. The solution, some hiring managers say, is not to say you were a producer if you were an associate producer, but to stress that you had the responsibilities and duties of a producer.

  Resume embellishers may also want to refrain from lies for the simple reason that it is easier than ever to catch cheating. A simple Google search can often turn up a wealth of information on a prospective employee. A survey last year by the Society for Human Resource Management showed that 40 percent of human resource professionals had increased the time they spent checking references since 2002, and 52 percent said they contracted out at least part of the background checking to professionals.

  So why risk lying on your resume? And why does the phenomenon seem more prevalent than in the past?

  Hiring managers cite a myriad of reasons. Many people are desperate and feel financial pressure to land a job, while some are confident that "white lies" will not be discovered.

  Rafet Kaplan, the northeast bureau chief for the Fox News Channel, who has been responsible for hiring at several companies, said: "I think it's a baseline insecurity. They want to look and feel better about themselves."

  He said his company conducted extensive background checks to root out resume prevaricators.

  Steven Miranda, the chief human resource and strategic planning officer for the Society for Human Resource Management, says a skilled interviewer who digs deep enough will be able to identify job candidates who have misrepresented themselves on their resumes. But he acknowledges that some candidates fall through the cracks.

  Miranda points to a number of recent resume-padders, like David Edmondson, the former chief executive of RadioShack, who claimed college degrees he did not have, and Bausch & Lomb's chairman and chief executive, Ronald Zarrella, who falsely claimed to have an MBA.

  But many ordinary workers say they believe some exaggerations are necessary to survive in a brutally competitive job market. A 36-year-old office manager from Brooklyn, who insisted on anonymity, justified her own resume misrepresentations as a form of self-preservation.

  "I have some misleading things on my resume," she acknowledged. "I didn't graduate from college; I'm nine credits short of a degree. In my mind, I have a college education, just not a degree, and I shouldn't be penalized for that."

  On her resume she lists the college she attended without dates of attendance or graduation. She said that if asked, she would admit that she did not have her degree but added that so far she had not been asked.

  Few human resource employees or hiring professionals would sympathize with her or anyone else with a misleading resume.

  "It speaks to issues of integrity and credibility," Kaplan said.
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