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Computerworld
January
18, 1999
BLOATED
RESUMES DRIVE UP HIRING MANAGERS TIME, COSTS;
High pay suspected motive for fibbing
Ironically,
the same companies that are feverishly trying to fill information
technology jobs are also getting pickier about whom they hire.
Hiring managers said they are spending more time and money testing
candidates' technical skills and checking backgrounds because
the well-publicized IT labor drought and inflated salaries have
brought all kinds of people out of the woodwork.
Most
often, candidates will exaggerate their job responsibilities and
inflate their past salaries, said David Hefler, manager of information
systems at Southern California Water Co. in San Dimas, Calif.
The upsurge in fibbing may be because of the money that's at stake,
he said.
Last
summer, New York-based corporate investigation firm Michael G.
Kessler & Associates Ltd. published a study that found 25%
of 1,000 resumes to be fraudulent in some way. In many cases,
the false claims were supported by fake documentation obtained
via the Web.
Although
resume fraud isn't new, and companies have always been cautious
about whom they hire, the increased discretion is costly. Gary
Cluff, a senior adviser to the Employee Management Association
in Alexandria, Va., estimated that in 1997 it cost about $10,500
to hire a white-collar worker, compared with $9,300 in 1996. Those
costs include advertising, recruiters' fees and other pre-hire
costs.
Jeff
Heath, president of Landstone Group, a New York-based IT recruiting
firm, said that in the past, he would check three references and
be satisfied. These days, he talks to a dozen people about a candidate's
experience before passing that individual on to a client. Heath
said he has stepped up his checks because "we see more people
who don't really have the credentials trying to get into IT."
Speedy
turnover also blurs the picture. If an employee has had five jobs
in seven years, it's more work to check them out.
Alex
Godun, president of the Delaware Valley Technical Recruiters Network
in Malvern, Pa., said he sees more and more resumes with "an
alphabet soup of technical terms." Some cram acronyms into
their resume s to have them selected by resume -scanning software,
he said
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