Spotting a Liar vs. Getting Employment Verification

When you’re trying to hire a new employee, you generally go through the motions of putting an ad on a job board, looking through resumes, picking out the ones you like and asking them to come in for an interview. After interviewing a few candidates, you generally make your decision. And this is the point where you might also choose to do a background check that includes education and employment verification.

White Lies Are Very Common

The fact is that many candidates exaggerate their qualifications a little bit on their resume. They might claim to have a GPA of 3.8 when actually it was a 3.5. Or they might lengthen their work experience by a few months or a year. All this is pretty normal and people do it all the time. In fact, if you look at Pamela Meyer’s Ted talk on how to spot liars, you realize that two people who have just met each other will lie three times in the first ten minutes.

Small Lies vs. Big Ones

It’s not such a big deal if the lie is a small one. However, it can become a big deal if the lie is larger. What if someone claims to have a college degree but doesn’t really have one? What if they say that they’ve worked at a similar company before but they haven’t? Alternatively, what if their claims far outstrip their capability and their claims? In this case, a background check including employment verification becomes necessary.

How a Background Check Helps With Employment Verification

Once you do a background check, you’ll know whether that person really has a college degree and work experience. And as long as they have the basic qualities you’re looking for, you can go ahead and hire them. It’s not going to make much of a difference whether their GPA was 3.5 or 3.8 and you can choose to overlook this kind of small discrepancy, depending on your requirements. However, you can’t afford to hire someone who’s completely wrong for the position.