Job seekers presenting fraudulent CVs

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Published Apr 24, 2013

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Durban - One in three job seekers has a fake driver’s licence, while 16 percent have a criminal record or fake qualifications listed on their CVs.

These statistics have been released by Managed Integrity Evaluation - a background screening company - and were based on 2.3 million checks conducted in the private and public sectors in 2012.

The company’s chief executive, Ina van der Merwe, said this type of fraud might increase as more people struggled to find jobs.

“The reality is the number of job seekers is growing disproportionately to the number of jobs available in the market,” said Van der Merwe.

This contributed to the prevalence of CV fraud, and the increase in “elaborations and falsification” as well as “deliberate omissions”.

Of those who were found to have a criminal record, 25 percent had been found guilty of violent crimes, 21 percent for theft, and 10 percent for narcotic crimes.

It was not only university qualifications that were found to be fake, Van der Merwe said - 38 percent of matric certificates “carried risk”, in terms of their authenticity.

The figures also revealed that 21 percent of job seekers had negative credit histories.

The Mercury

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