People who start … job hunting should avoid trying to mislead potential employers, according to an Irish pre-employment screening company.
Between 30 and 40 per cent of job applicants are estimated to mislead potential employers about their education record, their professional qualifications and previous employment record, according to CheckBack International.
But with pre-employment screening increasingly in use by companies, the chances of being caught out are increasing.
Joey Lyons, General Manager of CheckBack International, says that in the past year alone there has been a 50 per cent increase in companies using pre-employment screening. “It is not just major multinationals and financial institutions,” he says, “but also a wide range of indigenous companies.”
Mr. Lyons says that when preparing a CV, people should not give themselves credit for academic qualifications that they have not obtained or described specific levels of work experience, which they have not had.
Nor should they inflate their previous responsibilities or exaggerate their salaries or falsify dates. “All of these lies or misleading information can be checked, and are now more likely to be checked by the more sophisticated HR departments,” he says.
According to Joey Lyons, who has been head of CheckBack for over two years, many companies now regard pre-employment screening as an essential part of the recruiting process.
Employers are spending large amounts of money and time looking for the right employees. Mistakes in the selection process can cost them dearly. And increasingly over-stretched HR departments are out-sourcing this function, which is time-consuming but also is becoming more sophisticated and specialised.
So job seekers be warned, just as the indiscreet message or photographs that you might at some time posted to personal web-sites can be tracked by potential employers, so, too, will be the information on your CV.
CheckBack International is one of the first companies in Ireland to offer job applicants an opportunity to present themselves already pre-screened–an advantage to the employer because of the time saved and an advantage to the applicant, who is already ahead in the interview process.
CheckBack International, based in … Dublin is a fully Irish-owned company.
Its pre-employment screening deals with the facts as presented by a job applicant to the client company. The facts, as given, are verified. This process involves searches of multiple sources in the public domain.
CheckBack attempts to talk to all applicants prior to carrying out the screening; this gives the applicant the opportunity to amend information given on the application form.
Screening is carried out in accordance with the Data Protection Act and the company is regulated by the Data Protection Commissioner.
