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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Law - "Keep Your Resume Honest"

That is the advice in this article today from Deborah Ben-Canaan and Martha Fay Africa of The Recorder. Some quotes:

In the age of e-resumes and data systems that store millions upon millions of historical documents, recruiters and employers now have the ability to look longitudinally at information in resumes provided by candidates over many years and map the "content drift" of this information. This provides an entirely new way of determining a candidate's veracity when it comes to his or her employment history.

Inflating, changing, modifying or skewing facts so that they are not 100 percent accurate for the purpose of securing employment is not ethical. If anything, it causes the majority of recruiters and employers to back away from that candidate in order to find someone who presents himself or herself honestly and objectively. * * *

Over the years, our experience has led us to the same unfortunate conclusion -- there are far too many occurrences of resume falsification. Some recent examples include:

• A candidate whose resume was exemplary; she was charming, professional and ultimately was a finalist for a general counsel position. A review of her resumes from earlier years, however, turned up several inconsistencies: a) different law firms showed up on different versions; b) employment years were changed; and c) the candidate had actually passed the California Bar much later than reflected in her resume. The candidate was pulled from the finalist spot.

• A candidate with stellar credentials was looking for an in-house position. He added a year onto his law firm experience, but neglected to mention that one of those years was spent as a summer clerk, and not as an associate. Additionally, the candidate indicated that he had two jobs at the same time, and upon further probing, it came out that he was only an intern in one of the positions.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 22, 2009 10:03 AM
Posted to General Law Related