That deceptions maybe committed by current job applicants cannot be denied. Job applicants are no longer afraid to deceive about the data they provide to HR.
These deceptions can range from the experience of working in a previous company, the duration of how long they worked, the reasons why they left their previous jobs, to the amount of salary they had previously received.
These things can be a boomerang for job applicants themselves because these deceptions can and will be easily detected by HR in the following 5 ways:
1. Checking Standard Information
Standard information such as the location of residence, work experience, and previous education, will be checked by HR.
HR can check the information based on data provided by job applicants. One of them is a reference phone number from a previous workplace, HR will check whether the job applicant has worked in a previous office and ask about the performance of the job applicant.
Finally, HR can discover whether the job applicant can adapt in various office environment or instead they have difficulties to adapt and socialize.
Checking the character references that employees give, can also show inconsistencies in the data provided.
2. Checking the Time Range
The time span in education and experience of working in a previous company becomes an important factor for HR to see the honesty of job applicants.
One example, if a job applicant writes a time range on the CV that they worked for 1 year at the previous company, but could not explain the details of what he was doing, HR could doubt the authenticity of the data provided.
A small mistake that often occurs in CV writing is the inconsistency of the time span between one company to another, which will make HR confused as to whether the period of work written by the job applicant is true or not. With the time range written in the CV, HR can also check whether the facilities and the amount of salary that the job applicant gets is valid or just padding.
3. Checking Social Media
Social media in the digital era is especially important for the job applicants’ character assessment. Some companies, especially start-up companies, will look at the job applicant’s social media accounts.
Social media determines the character of prospective employees, showing if they are the kind of person who often uploads unimportant things or each upload is a positive content, and whether the job applicant is a narcissistic or not.
The LinkedIn account will also greatly help to check the similarity of information in the CV, if there is dissimilarity information between CV and LinkedIn, then there will be 2 two possibilities, the job applicants haven’t updated their personal data on their accounts or they are just being deceptive. These things will be considered by HR in determining which job applicants will qualify for the next process.
4. Holding a test
HR staff can conduct ability tests for job applicants. If the job applicant can get a good score from the test, then the job applicant probably is not being deceptive about his work experience, but if the results are not qualified, there must be a question mark on the result. Since the ability test is adjusted to the competence of the job applicant for the position being applied for.
One example, if the position being applied for is Graphic Design, then HR can ask the job applicant to make a simple design that can be submitted and will be assessed directly to see design feasibility in determining whether or not the job applicant passes during the application process.
5. Explanation and Intuition
We must consider that the information provided to HR, may contain unintended data errors. HR staff can ask for an explanation from the job applicant when irregularities are found, which the applicant can explain more clearly.
After listening to the job applicant’s explanation, the last thing that HR can count on is intuition. The HR staff must rely on intuition and the experience they have gained while becoming the HR staff to determine whether the job applicant is truthful or just telling a lie.
Thus, HR staff can decide based on intuition to give the job applicant an opportunity to step up to the next step or not even if errors are detected in the initial process.