Every two weeks we hold a conference call with a select group of long standing peers in the retained executive search industry. These are boutique firms just like ours, and a few years ago we banded together to create what we call the Partners Search Alliance. The goal? To share experiences, generate collective wisdom, and improve our respective practices.
On one such recent conference call, one of our PSA partners, David Magy from Abelyn, Magy & Underberg in Minneapolis, brought a new service to everyone's attention that shocked us all. Their tag line? "We're the Leader in Covert Disinformation." Quoting from The Art of War and other such tomes on their homepage, they provide--for a fee-- a new back story for anyone who feels the need to either repair, improve, or replace parts of their history they feel would help sell their story. For years now reports have been published on the percentage of resumes that have misinformation. One background checking service, finds that more than 50% of the background checks they do turn up discrepancies in work experience and/or education.
No, this isn't some offshore boiler room shop. It's located here in the good old U.S. of A. And ostensibly operates legally.
Lesson to be learned here? Employers beware. Human resources professionals, make sure the information you get is from reliable sources. In the 21st century, it's easier to lie, and harder to uncover deception.
And to be clear, this isn't just doctoring up a resume and hoping that an employer won't check. As we understand it, it's altering or creating a false but referenceable career and/or educational background with names, telephone numbers and email addresses that can be called, and back stories that can be provided if desired.
For more, see Abelyn & Magy's blog post here.
