Update: Identity of Fraudulent Resume Revealed!
Two days ago, I wrote about being called by my boss about a questionable resume he received for a job opening on our project.
The applicant had included a section detailing a lot of major accomplishments he had done at one of my old employers, and I was tasked with finding out whether it was true. I had never heard of him, but I was only there for 5 months. I emailed the section of the resume and the applicant’s name to my old boss and coworkers to find out what they thought.
They replied back that they never heard about him and he’s lying about his resume. I waited for a few days and asked my old boss again whether there was any chance this guy could have worked in another part of the company.
My old boss stated that he started that group, all requests for work went through him, and he dug through his old records and nothing came up for this applicant.
But here’s the kicker
It hit my old boss where he saw that resume section before. He had helped another consultant that DID work at our company with his resume, and they matched up almost exactly with our suspect applicant’s claims.
So, it is now a DEFINITE fraudulent resume. And the best part is, we interview the guy today!
If anything newsworthy comes of this interview, I’ll post it.
Who else has run into false resumes? Have YOU submitted exaggerated, or even false, claims on your own resume?
OMG……….. how crazy is that! Cannot wait to hear the follow-up.
I never submitted a fradulent resume. Im too scared. And your post pretty much explains why I never did it.
Yep, while I was working for the government, I received a resume from a guy who claimed he was a professor at MIT. While he had connections to MIT (he wrote some articles for the Sloan Business School’s magazine or something), he was never a professor there. My boss was enamored of the guy, but I did not like him because he was arrogant. Bottom line, he was hired, and we found out his background from some of the many people who hated him.
I think the odds are pretty darn good that the two candidates used the same recruiting agency and the agency put the text from one resume into another…. I’m sure some people are fraudulent with their resumes, but given the degree of dishonesty I’ve seen with recruiting agencies, this would be right up their alley. Plus, if they are caught they can say it was an error in retyping the resume…
Here’s an update: We interviewed him on Friday and sure enough he claimed that he worked at the company in question (the one I used to work at). He definitely didn’t work there, and didn’t even know what the company did when we asked! He generalized what he did there, as well as some other companies on his resume.
We didn’t let on that we knew he was lying, but we’ll still do due diligence to determine whether the recruiter was at fault as well.