One In Three Cvs A Fraud
The Sunday Age
Sunday August 24, 2003
Up to one in three people seeking jobs in the financial sector has been discovered lying in their applications, including hiding criminal convictions or making up academic qualifications, prompting calls for greater powers for employers to screen candidates.
Leaders in pre-employment screening services say the scale of the problem in Australia is rising because of the pressure on applicants to make themselves stand out in the competitive job market. Its detection is also rising as more companies make rigorous background checks.
Forging academic qualifications has been made easier by sophisticated desktop computer equipment that allows applicants to create entire education histories, including detailed records of graduate or postgraduate studies at leading universities.
Phony diplomas and university degrees can also be readily bought through the internet from ``degree mills" operating in the United States.
Malcolm Shackell, the national partner for investigations and forensic services at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said his investigators found two in every five curriculum vitaes checked at one large financial institution contained ``serious mis-statements", including non-existent qualifications, exaggerated claims of previous jobs and gaps in employment history, which could disguise criminal convictions or time spent in jail.
``That's a pretty significant proportion," he said. ``But that's not an unusual figure for the rest of our clients.
``Identity fraud is a big issue at the moment. One of the aspects of pre-employment screening is just making sure that the people you are employing actually are who they claim to be."
In one investigation it was discovered that someone hired as a chief accountant had no accountancy experience and had made a ``shambles" of the company's financial records, Mr Shackell said.
The rapid growth in pre-employment screening has been partly driven by new national laws and guidelines on corporate governance, anti-money laundering and fraud prevention. Under new financial sector legislation the directors, senior managers and auditors of authorised deposit-taking financial institutions, such as banks, must be deemed ``fit and proper persons".
But most companies in the finance sector were still not doing pre-employment screening ``to the extent that it happens in Europe and America", Mr Shackell said.
People were more likely to lie about having studied or worked overseas because they thought it was harder for employers to check on them.
Talking to referees offered by job applicants was pointless because ``who puts down a referee who is going to say something bad about them?".
Guy Underwood, a former NSW police detective and managing director of pre-employment screening specialist Hibis Corporation, said the number of job applicants found lying on their CVs in Australia had risen from one in four to about one in three.
Mr Underwood said the two most common lies uncovered involved wrongly claiming educational qualifications and exaggerating previous roles in former jobs.
But it was getting harder to conduct pre-employment screening because of privacy, equal opportunity, anti-discrimination and other laws.
Mr Underwood said this put financial institutions in a difficult position because they might breach other laws if they hired someone who was found later not to be a fit and proper person.
It was possible that new legislation was needed to protect companies from breaching employment laws when carrying out pre-employment checks or refusing to hire someone, he said.
Most screening, including criminal record checks, can only be carried out with an applicant's consent. It normally includes confirming a person's identity, checks on the CV, authentication of professional and academic qualifications, verification of previous employment, obtaining probity references and a criminal record check.
``You can follow privacy principles, but I think there needs to be a bit of reworking (of legislation) to ensure that it's not too onerous on organisations seeking to make sure they only hire adequately qualified and experienced people," Mr Underwood said.
Also behind the increase in pre-employment screening was the mounting risk of employers being held responsible for the actions of their employees, he said. In a 2001 Federal Court case a bank was ordered to refund $300,000 and pay $80,000 interest to an investor after it was discovered that the employee who lost the money had convictions for fraud.
Peter Anderson, the director of workplace policy at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said privacy and discrimination laws had generally failed to reflect the growing obligations of employers to carry out pre-employment screening.
``Employers do feel as if they are the meat in the sandwich," he said.
The community must accept that the rights of the individual needed to be ``qualified" by the responsibilities that employers had to carry out pre-employment screening to meet legal or corporate governance responsibilities or protect other workers and the public. But he said trying to protect employers in legislation was problematic because, in the past, such laws had tended to be weighted in favour of individuals.
Proposals recently put forward by the Law Reform Commission would stop employers using genetic information as part of pre-employment screening.
``I think we need to make existing discrimination and privacy law work in a more balanced way," he said.
FAKING IT. . .
. . . IN THE SUPREME COURT
Dianne White told the Victorian Supreme Court earlier this month that she was qualified to be an expert witness because she was a psychologist, with a science degree and a masters of psychology from the University of Sydney, and had been a registered psychologist until two years ago.
When challenged and told the university had no record of her qualifying in psychology, Ms White told the court her university documents were at home but not available because they were locked in a cabinet.
Ms White's husband had the key and he was uncontactable in a meeting and then in an exam.
The court was later told Ms White had no psychology qualifications. Police are investigating the matter.
. . . IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS
Glen Oakley's $1.2 million contract as general manager of Randwick Council in Sydney was terminated in March after it was revealed he faked academic qualifications when applying for past employment.
Randwick Mayor Dominic Sullivan said Mr Oakley, 48, left, a former corporate and government executive, had "a 20-year history of building his career on false credentials".
Mr Oakley falsely claimed to hold several degrees, including an MBA from Harvard University, an honours in medical science from Newcastle University and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of New England.
Mr Oakley insisted he had attended the university courses listed on his resume, but admitted he had "claimed I had degrees I didn't have".
. . . IN THE BOARDROOM
American Chris Tyler, right, quit as chief executive of successful Australian software and internet company Solution 6 in May 2000 after it was revealed he had received a 10-year suspended sentence in the United States in 1985 for possessing more than 22 kilograms of marijuana and was involved in the failure of Lessonware, a company listed on the Canadian stock exchange.
An emotional Mr Tyler had earlier confirmed to shareholders at the company's extraordinary general meeting the details of his past were correct, but said he had "no intention of resigning from the company because of the negative publicity".
. . . AT THE TV STATION
Canadian John Davy, 51, left, was sacked last year as head of a new television channel for Maoris in New Zealand after six weeks following revelations his claimed professional background and qualifications did not exist. Mr Davy claimed to have a Masters of Business from the nonexistent Ashland School of Business at Denver State University. Fake Ashland School of Business MBAs were found to be available to buy through the internet. The British Columbia Securities Commission, of which Mr Davy claimed to be a member and an adviser, had no knowledge of him. He also laid claim to writing two books and being a former Canadian fencing champion. The Wellington employment agency that recruited Mr Davy for the $118,000-a-year television job said it had been the victim of a "sophisticated international fraudster".
© 2003 The Sunday Age