Fake money is heard of. Fake jewels are heard of. The business world is suffering with fake resumes. Resume - Doctor is a South Burlington based company that specializes into resume counseling. It performed a background check on over 1000 resumes under various categories like educational qualifications, dates of employment, titles, etc… The startling result was that 42.7% of the resumes had misrepresentations of one or the other kind.

Some of the most common types of resume lies are:

• Lying about getting a degree – This is the most common form of lying where people claim to have a degree that they have not earned.

• Tampering with the dates – Sometimes there is a cut off as to the period in which the person must have completed their studies, or there can be a limitation on the age. These dates are tampered with.

• Exaggerating the profits made for the former firm – If a person claims that he has made a few million dollars in profit for the firm, the prospective firm might expect him to do the same.

• Exaggerating the salary received in the former firm – The problem with this kind of lying is that the prospective firm might ask the person to produce the pay details of the previous firm.

• Changing the job title

• Lying about technical skills

• Lying about the languages spoken

• Giving a fake address

• Tampering with the grade point averages

There have been many studies as to why people exaggerate in their resumes as well in other places. A study involving one million high school students, 70% of them said that they ranked themselves higher in leadership skills in comparison with peers. More astonishingly, 94% of the professors said the same in comparison with their peers. Students who fared badly in logic tests actually claimed that their reasoning capabilities were in the highest quartile. While they do cheat on some or the other point, the most common reason to do so has been found to be incompetence. People are ashamed of not having a college diploma or a particular job title.

There have been so many cases of fake resumes that were big in news. Recently, a former chief executive of an MNC who had resigned in February 2006 had to do that, after questions were raised about his résumé’s accuracy. He claimed to have earned a degree which was false.

One way to detect fake resumes is to use the behavioral consistency method where the candidate’s experience and accomplishments are compared to the tasks required to do a particular job. The answers are benchmarked against the requirements. Discrepancies in the answers and the content of the resume can be easily detected. Subject Matter Experts help in determining the right answers for that job role. Such methods help reduce the chances of processing fake resumes.