In today’s volatile world, paying the price to live and work in the land of the free and the home of the brave means full disclosure.
Full disclosure you ask?
It means letting it all hang out, telling the truth, not lying or faking about your background, accomplishments, experience or employment intentions.
Being 100% responsible for who you are and what you bring to the table.
What is a lie?
What is considered a lie?
What is a sin of omission and is it worse than a sin of co-mission?
As I lead workshops for the unemployed on how to Ace the Interview, a chronic complaint under the guise of a question always seems to emerge out of the participant’s job hunt frustration. That complaint is, “Why do these employers make us job applicants jump through flaming hoops of fire just to go to work for their company? Aren’t they grateful we applied? They need us. After all there is a talent shortage out there!”
Over the years my response hasn’t changed, “Aren’t you asking them to pay you each week, aren’t you asking them to give you an opportunity to work? Furthermore, why you would event want to go work for a company that in this day in age did not take hiring as a serious matter?”
Whether a job candidate is a life long American born worker or an international transplant the one thing that holds true for all of us is that more now than ever we live in great times. Times of immense opportunity for those who seize it and that being said, we also live in times of uncertainly and fear.
If you know you have great attributes and successes to offer, stand behind those attributes and successes, and find a company that will be interested in you for whom you are and what you can contribute. If you don’t have these marketable attributes and successes then I recommend that you go out and find opportunities to create successes, just don’t locate these opportunities up in your imagination.
Remember even a great employee who falls prey to the temptation to make up something to make themselves look better can be ousted in a manner of seconds for no other reason than falsification of information, which is a crime in the court of employment. This by the way, is considered a sin of co-mission.
While people are still migrating to the US as fast as they can get their paperwork in order, it often falls as a big surprise to success seekers born out of us borders when they find out what employers need to know before they hire them. Immigrants are not the only ones being caught by the surprise and frustration of what employers need to know, this tough screening and assessment criteria is becoming the norm for most workers in white collar professional type roles. Even though pre employment screening is often referred to as necessary red tape to get a hiring budget approved, the reality is that most companies are already conducting some sort of selection or background assessment prior to extending job offers.
Furthermore, most astute job seekers realize that this emergent surge in character probing is essential in the risk management game for the world that we live in.
When candidates are faced with such strict hiring guidelines, often out of insecurity and desperation they take some bad advice that typically sounds something like, “it’s only a white lie, saying you have done that will only get you a better offer, and by the time you need to use that skill on the job, you will have time to learn it.” Or worse yet “Just take that job off your resume, if they can’t say anything nice about you, pretend you never worked there, no one will ever know.” (a sin of omission) That is unless they do a social security trace, hmmm.
In America, our land of opportunity, our land of the free and our home of the brave there are so many opportunities to lasso success that the temptation of doing what ever it takes to lasso it has gotten a bit out of control.
I stand on the ground that leaving something out is just as deceitful as adding something. Truth and integrity is about being straight and clear about what is so, and what is not so. Nothing hidden.
It is this lack of control, the lack of systems and structures that could be blamed for some of the major that major financial and rescue disasters of our time.
Our lack of control could not help the devastation from Hurricane Katrina yet the proper hiring system would have withdrawn Michael Browns’ candidacy for the leadership role of FEMA; as it was his bogus background that got him the job and was one of many leading factors in the gross inadequacy of the Katrina rescue effort. In short he was a phony. He lied; he made up a fictitious background and got hired for one of the most important roles in America.
Understandably most of us are not hiring Kenneth Leys’ or Michael Browns yet we are hiring for many critical roles in our organization and we are overlooking factors like Are they who they say they are? Have they done what they say they have done?.
In the recruiting industry anyone who has been in the trenches for a considerable amount of time has an understanding that basically if given the opportunity most people will lie to get a job. A recent survey showed that about 75% of people "pad" their resume with credentials and position responsibilities they have never held. Many individuals stated that they enhanced their qualifications to be competitive.
So if this many people are padding their resumes, or lying about their credentials – our job as hiring managers is to flush out the baloney sausage and get to the facts. Our job is to uncover our candidates credentials, experience, qualifications, behavioral, values, strengths and weaknesses, for if we don’t they will shortly rear their ugly head to us when we are least expecting it.
According to recent surveys 30 to 40 percent of all information given on resumes and job applications is false or misleading. As a result of corporate scandals, such as Enron and WorldCom, the Sept. 11 attacks and negligent hiring lawsuits, where a company is sued because an employee caused harm to someone else, MOST astute companies are now requiring candidates to be scrutinized under the magnifying glass.
Actually, due to the potential severe repercussions of a faulty hire the Society for Human Resource Management shows that 80 percent of companies (up 30% from 1996) said they run a criminal check on applicants before hiring. The Ethics scoreboard states, "The practice of falsifying degrees is a burgeoning epidemic, fueled by internet-marketed diploma mills, realistic sounding unaccredited "universities" that certify meaningless degrees for a price."
It is important to remember that criminal checks and degree verifications alone won’t uncover a non criminal who may posses a propensity for criminal intent, theft or lying on the job. For that insight you will have to dig deeper.
What employers need to know to protect themselves, their clients and their employees is driven by a number of factors, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
These include:
- Driving record
- Vehicle registration
- Credit records
- Criminal records
- Social Security Number
- Education records
- Court records
- Workers' compensation
- Bankruptcy
- Character references
- Neighbor interviews
- Medical records
- Property ownership
- Military records
- State licensing records
- Drug test records
- Past employers
- Personal references
- Incarceration records
- Sex offender lists
What employers want to know about their potential employees to ensure their profitability, reputation and service levels?
- Candidates Communication Style
- Candidates Behaviors
- Candidates Values
- Candidates Competencies
- Candidates Willingness
As far as job seeker advice goes, don’t lie, stand for what you can
do, who you are and what you have done and then interview with all your
heart, your head in the right place and both of your feet firmly
planted on the ground.
I once read somewhere, “The truth shall set you free.”
