The research surveyed 1,000 UK workers and asked them if they’ve ever considered lying on their CV, or to a potential employer, in order to secure a job. According to the data, professionals are willing to take the risk and below are the five top areas that Brits would be willing to lie about to get a job:
- Dates of employment (31.4%)
- Gaps in their CV (27.1%)
- Salary (to secure a higher one) (21.4%)
- Work experience (12.9%)
- Responsibilities in previous job (11.4%)
Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library comments on the findings: “It’s clear from our findings that UK workers are not afraid to tell white lies on their CV in order to get a job. For employers, this means recruitment teams need to become more vigilant when it comes to vetting and assessing potential hires.
“So whether that’s asking for references from previous roles, or ensuring you ask the right interview questions to get the most out of your candidates, it’s important that you consider whether someone may be trying to pull the wool over your eyes!”
Despite these findings, 90.5% of workers do think it’s wrong to lie on your CV. That said, 69.5% think that professionals are forced to twist the truth because employers expect too much of them. When asked the reasons behind this, workers said that people lie on their CV to look more experienced (63.8%), appear more qualified (54.8%), to gain a higher salary (41.2%) and to look more skilled (31.5%).
In addition, over three quarters (78.8%) said that they would worry that they’d get fired if their new employer found out that they’d lied on their CV, with an extra 86.4% stating that they’d be worried about being given a job they didn’t know how to do. What’s more, once in the role, 82.2% would be concerned that they would struggle to do the job as a result of their lie.
Biggins continues: “Bringing on board someone that can’t do the job is going to be a waste of time for everyone involved. However, there will be cases where someone just isn’t right for the business once they join. In order to ensure that you hire the right people, be careful to only shortlist candidates that appear to match all the required criteria for the job.
“Nowadays, it’s much easier to discover when someone has fibbed on their CV, especially with the help of the internet. Don’t be afraid to push your candidates to reveal more, it may be that they’re actually a great fit for the business, but felt they needed to lie to look better.”
