In June Lee McQueen was named as Sir Alan Sugar’s new apprentice, at the end of the BBC TV series The Apprentice.
This is despite it emerging that he had lied on his CV. He claimed he had attended a university for two years when in truth – as McQueen had to admit on camera when Sir Alan’s staff got a written reference from the uni – it had only been four months. When asked, Sir Alan shrugged it off, to the effect that many other people did it, or something similar such as ‘creative’ expenses claims. The affair did raise the question of false resumes and other – not to put too fine a point on it – lies, that checks of job-seekers and staff may dredge up. If like Sir Alan the employer decides not to take notice, at least they are acting on the basis of the facts, and not in ignorance. Avis Easteal, General Manager at Experian BackgroundChecking.com spoke to Professional Security.
The case of ‘The Apprentice’ did show up how each organisation has an ‘integrity line’. Where the line is differs from company to company, and can vary from industry to industry. A sector under a regulator such as the FSA and financial services – which Experian comes under, too – by law has to meet personnel and other standards. Risk has to be assessed. In a call centre, for instance, staff are taking personal information. Besides the risk of an individual doing something with someone else’s identity data, there is the reputation of the company to consider – a company that depends on the trust of customers.
Airlines have guidelines that require staff to pass before they can work airside. Or, checking may be required for a company whose staff visit homes, whether installing cabling, or satellite television; or reading a meter for a utility. Again, if a member of staff did something wrong in a customer’s home, there is the reputation of the company at risk. She suggested that a check for a financial company might find ten per cent of staff with a criminal conviction not spent. Nor is the percentage the only thing that matters; she gave the case of a company with only 2pc of staff with an unspent conviction, but of those almost all (92 per cent) were for drink-driving. And that matters if the staff do driving for the company; it would invalidate the company’s insurance.
This raises the question of not only checking job applicants, but people already working for you, whether checking each year or three years. A company might as part of its terms and conditions require an employee to tell the employer of any convictions, but what if he keeps a drink-drive conviction quiet, to stay in the job? Experian offers three types of employment checking: for the candidate; for tenants (so you know if the tenant will be able to pay the rent); and staff verification.
Avis did find it of interest that the Apprentice was a man; she pointed to a recent survey that men are more likely to falsify their resume, with 12 per cent admitting to lying on their CV, compared to seven per cent of women. Education, indeed, is the main thing lied about on CVs, particularly by the young, whether they have been to a university at all, or their degree result. Or it’s not something on the CV that is a lie, but something that to tell the whole truth ought to be there. “We find people who are going to lie will li about whether they went to university; and maybe only tell you about jobs where they would leave with a reference that’s good for them; and they would fail to tell you about the job that ended very badly. The whole point is, does everything on the CV add up, and is there a gap? because gaps usually tell you whether someone is being dishonest in some way. There might be a genuine reason for a gap; you might be unemployed or travelling; all these things can be checked.
If someone is in financial distress, might that make them more susceptible to carry out fraud, for instance if an ID fraudster hangs around outside a call centre, offering to buy customer identities? So rather than a customer paying for a five-year reference, it may pay (in terms of results) to get only a two-year reference, but also a criminal record check, and a financial check.
What of data protection? She said: “We are in the business of being on the right side of data protection, because our business can’t exist unless we are completely complying with data protection.” That requires the buyer of the check to ensure that those being checked consent to the check. That could mean that people who know they will be found out by such a check, withdrawing from the job application. And Avis adds that there is a message to put out to job candidates, that they will be checked, to deter the dishonest (as with those seeking to defraud insurers).
