Watch for Résumé Tricks
February 2008

With an increasingly savvy employee market, HR professionals need to be even more alert to résumé tricks and traps that can, at best, waste their time and, at worst, result in a bad hire. What should you look out for when reviewing résumés?

Kurt Weyerhauser, a managing partner of Kensington Stone, a Los Angeles executive search firm, has reviewed more than 18,000 résumés over the past 20 years. He suggests some key areas you should examine with some skepticism:

Inconsistencies

It has become less common to conduct résumé checks to verify dates of employment and titles, and to conduct degree verifications. This has allowed people to be “creative” in filling in dates they were unemployed, enhancing their titles, even including degrees they didn’t earn. “Typically if you find one inconsistency, you’ll end up finding more if you dig a little deeper,” warns Weyerhauser.

While it’s true that most companies restrict the information they will release about former employees, simple information such as dates of employment or title held usually will be shared with potential employers. And universities will customarily verify degrees they’ve granted.

Functional Résumé

While there may be situations where a functional, or skills-based, résumé makes sense, more often than not it’s used to hide gaps or other problems in a person’s background, says Weyerhauser. Anything other than a standard chronological résumé should be viewed with some suspicion. If a functional résumé is all you’re given, consider requesting a standard chronological résumé as well. Or make sure that the employment application they fill out and sign includes what is effectively a chronological employment history.

Vague Résumés

Perhaps the most common problem with many résumés is that they rely largely on unsubstantiated assertions rather than facts, details and concrete information. Always be wary of résumés that are chuck full of adjectives — excellent management skills, superb communications skills, exemplary changemanagement skills.

While facts are easy to check, subjective assertions are not. You either have an MBA or you do not. You improved productivity 18% over two years or you did not. But it’s almost impossible to disprove that someone has “excellent” communication skills. How is “excellent” defined? Whose judgment? What criteria?

A well-written résumé includes examples, metrics and awards to support any assertions. “The more facts, details and metrics that are included in a résumé, the more you can make your own assertions about a candidate,” says Weyerhauser, “rather than having to rely on the assertions made by the person whose résumé you are reviewing.” But be sure the “facts” are indeed facts; check when possible to see if the claims are accurate.

When a résumé is filled with few facts and laden with self-serving, subjective assertions, it is not only appropriate, but crucial to really dig into these areas during an interview. Have the candidate explain how they came to their conclusions, request metrics that corroborate their claims, any awards they have received and any facts they can share that can be verified.

Ferreting out “résumé fiction,” isn’t always easy, but the payoff in maintaining a competent effective staff is worth the extra effort.

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