Lies, damn lies and resumes: Researching claims made by candidates
Welcome to the February 2023 edition of our newsletter! In this issue, we’ll examine how to research the employment, educational and licensing histories of subjects.
Verify, then trust: Vetting job candidates and others
From Congress members to executives, resume embellishment and outright fabrications are a topic of great interest today. How can a potential employer, or litigant soon to be adverse to another party, find the truth?
Many claims made on resumes, or on sites like LinkedIn, can be verified via public record searches such as news articles and third-party biographical sources. These will often reference when an individual is featured in a company press release, for example, or tell you if they ever had a company e-mail address and title. For employees whose position may be below an executive level, looking at trade association events and other industry-specific items can help verify whether someone was employed by a company, and possibly convey their role. Litigation, as well, can be useful even if a party was not named in an action but was mentioned in another context, such as in an exhibit of e-mails between colleagues.
Professional licensing and industry affiliations are also an important item to research – is the person in good standing if working in a licensed field, and do they carry the recognition they’ve claimed? This may require calling various industry groups and asking them to verify membership, as many of these groups do not make their rosters public, and are not required to do so.
Finally, while social media can be a catalyst for people to deceive others, reviewing a subject’s timeline can also be a useful snapshot of someone’s career path as it happened – for better and for worse.
As always, vigilance is the best course of action, whether looking to make a hire or complete a transaction. Thorough verification of professional claims is an important tool in building and maintaining trustworthy business relationships.