Why telling the truth on your CV is the right way to go

Everyone understands that there is a lot of pressure on young job hunters finding the right vacancy and this is even more relevant in this current climate we are facing.

A recent poll has shown that more under 21 job hunters are lying on their CVs compared to last year.
A company called Powerchex, who screen applications and CVs for finance companies dealt with 4, 735 applications between June 2008 and May 2009. These applications came from all age groups, and the company found that 899 had false information on them. Of this figure, 307 of the applications belonged to Under 21 year olds.
The company states that the under 21 category are the group to most likely lie on applications and CVs. The most popular lie it seems is to claim you have a 2:1 degree rather than 2:2.
Other common lies are for applicants to make out contracts with their previous job had expired when in fact they had been asked to leave. Applicants also have the tendency to embellish small menial jobs to make the role sound much more important and to impress their potential employer.

Students leaving university in 2009 face the highest levels of graduate unemployment in recent times.
So is lying on your CV such a bad thing? We all know that a lot of people embellish slightly on CVs and leave things off them to appear better to future employers. But in extreme cases you may risk going to prison if you lie on your CV.
A former NHS trust chief executive, Neil Taylor claimed to be a graduate and received a 12 month suspended sentence.
The lie was only found out when the NHS trust merged with another. Mr Taylor had been doing the job for quite some time and it was obvious that he could perform the job without his degree. But the judge felt differently and felt that people who lie on their CVs cheat the people who spend a lot of time and effort earning qualifications.
The recession may be adding pressure to everyone to take chances on succeeding in finding a new job, but honesty is the best policy especially if your employer may fire you or even take you to court if you are found out to have lied on your application.

This article was written by Tom Sangers on behalf of Martin Ward Anderson who offer banking recruitment for jobs in banking