Dear Liberty....

"I had a great opportunity at a new company a week ago, but I realized the 6 month gap in my employment might look bad on my profile, so I extended the last position I had by 6 months and turned in my paperwork. I am a perfect match, this is a great opportunity, but the more and more I think about it, the more I realize this little lie could lose the deal for me!

What should I do? I lied and it was a stupid thing to do, but I'm not sure how to correct it. I might be able to contact the old company and ask them not to respond to any questions regarding my employment, or I can fess up and tell my prospective employer that I lied..."

Like the many hundreds of applicants who lie on their resumes or job applications, you're chances of doing nothing and seeing where the chips lie after the dust settles AND still getting the job are slim to none. The fact that you feel some guilt regarding this is a good thing.

You are very likely to fail an employment background check with the falsified dates. Even if your old employer agrees to not mention anything is also very likely to end up as a failed employment verification.

You should immediately contact your prospective employer. Tell them you realized you made an error on your application and that you'd like to correct it. Don't offer any further excuses, they will appreciate your honesty and likely not contemplate whether there was malicious intent behind the error or not. Good luck!

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How to Hire

What do you do when your best employee relocates to another city and another job? You're number one sales associate changes professions? Or your lead manager left for lunch and never returned?

In either scenario, you'll be left in a pinch. In situations such as these, impulse hiring can be tempting, replacing a valued employee can seem daunting, and rash decisions are easily made.

To keep your head on straight during this stressful period, remember a few golden rules:

1. Know the position. The better you understand the requirements of the job, the more simple it will be to pull out the most qualified candidates. Re-think the job description and make sure it truly describes the duties expected and required of the job.

2. Develop an outreach plan. Target your job market effectively by utilizing the appropriate listing services. Job seekers are online, on social networks and looking for the best position available to them. You want to collect the attention of the best job seekers so you want to advertise the position using as many outlets as possible.

3. Screen application. You should have a stack of excellent looking applications and resumes. When it comes time to narrow the playing field, you'll need to weed out anyone who isn't an immediate match. Pre-employment screening is an effective way to do this. Conduct background checks. Call references, not just those listed but check former employers as well. This last step is vital to insuring the safety of your organization.

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Real Advice about Falsifying Your Resume

Taken from the archives of "Dear Prudence" at Slate.com, Prudence offers Remorseful Job Applicant great advice:

Dear Prudie,
I've been out of work for several months and have had trouble landing interviews—I have children and really need a job. My résumé is fantastic, with excellent references, but I do not have a four-year college degree. Finally, I got desperate and edited one of my résumés to show that I had a bachelor's degree from a college I attended 30 years ago. I sent it out only once (and have since deep-sixed it). The problem is that I received an inside referral to a job with an excellent company, hit it off with everyone during the interviews, and landed the job—contingent on my passing a background check. This is where I sent my falsified résumé. I completed the background check truthfully. But now my stomach is churning and I want to call the company, tell them what happened, and resign the position. I've never done anything like this before. It may be the worst thing I've ever done in my life.
—Remorseful Job Applicant

Dear Remorseful,
Do not resign! Contact human resources immediately and tell them there's a mistake on your résumé and that it should say you attended, not graduated from, your college. Let them know the background-check form is accurate. That may take care of the problem. If your call raises questions, be succinct and truthful. Say you made this onetime mistake in a foolish attempt to improve your résumé, you regretted it the moment you did it, and whatever else happens, you are relieved to have put things right. It's much better for you to come forward first before the checkers find the discrepancy. Yes, there's a chance they won't, but that's a big risk. If they miss it, and you do get hired, every time anyone says, "Marvin, can I see you in my office?" your stomach acid will pour. If you get the job and this comes out later, it could be a firing offense. And if this is the worst thing you've ever done, take pride in having led such an exemplary life.

--Prudie

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Lying for the Job

As the rate of unemployment steadily climbs, the competition in the job market heats up. The market belongs to employers with 10s, even 100s of applicants applying for each job posted. If you're among the many unemployed, searching for work, and quickly running out of money, the temptation to lie or exaggerate on your resume can be big, especially if you have something to cover up.

If you were fired for performance problems and don't acknowledge them, you could be offered a nice base salary and possibly a bonus to go with it. But if word about your performance issues spreads across the grapevine, as those types of words often do, you could be in for a world of pain. Your employer will likely terminate you for cause. What you might not expect: they can sue you for that hefty bonus, citing that your received it under false pretenses. Now you're out of a job and out of money.

According to a Stanford University study conducted some years back, more than 90% of resumes, in some respect or other, contain false or misleading information, ranging from slight embellishment to outright fraud.

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Applying for Job? Have Winning References

Rest assured that when you apply for a job, your employment history and references will be checked. The greater the opportunity, the deeper the investigation. A good job at a visible company will scrutinize every detail of your application and history.

Including professional references for jobs such as these is an important part of the applications process. You need to be sure that the references your potential employer contacts will seal the deal for you, not make your case tougher.

Your references should be the highest quality you can provide. Here are some tips to picking and maintaining a good person for your reference,

• Keep your records up to date. Keeping up to speed with your references job title, phone number and position in the company is important. If you provide old information, the potential employer WILL find out and it will look like you haven't been in contact with the person for years.
• Maintain a relationship with your reference, for the same reasons stated above. Also, it will help your reference keep up their opinion of you if you keep in contact. Using sites like LinkedIn can be very useful for this.
• Advise your reference about important opportunities. You don't want to bother them with every offer that comes your way, but really important opportunities merit a heads up. Let them know what the company is looking for, hopefully it will brighten their reference.

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Bad Credit Makes for Terrible Prospects

While the economy is impacting everybody, there are some that are being dealt heavier blows than others. While struggling to pay overwhelming mortgage notes and all the bills that come in on a monthly basis, those hunting for jobs may find may doors shut on them due to bad credit, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

While there are no clear indicators that bad credit necessarily means you are not suited for the job, employers tend to overuse the credit report when making crucial hiring decisions. Unless the applicant will be handling money (cashiers, accountants, etc.) the credit report really has no bearing on the applicants ability.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and state credit laws help to regulate how an employer can obtain and use their findings. An employer must gain your consent in writing to do a credit check and the report they receive is different than one viewed by a credit agency or an individual. Full account numbers are not revealed and they won’t see a credit score, but they will be able to see late payments, collections and bankruptcies. If you are actually denied employment because of your credit report, the company must notify you so that you may view the report on which the decision was based.

In the meantime, a House bill introduced last month would prohibit employers from using credit report details for their hiring decisions. The Equal Employment for All Act, if passed, will keep credit worthiness (with some exceptions for financial firms and government agencies) out of the employment process so that getting credit at work will make it more about performance than payments.

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Bad Credit : No Job

When Connie Hall lost her job in March and applied for a new position in accounts payable at another company, she was frustrated to discover she was denied employment due to a repossession of a car and unpaid hospitals bills on her credit report.

"I understand from their point of view," Hall says, "but the way I saw it was, just because my credit score doesn't meet your requirement's doesn't mean I wouldn't do a good job."

Maybe Hall didn't really understand the employer's point of view. Bad credit is a good indicator of responsibility, and in these economic times with so many applicants for one open position, a single blip, or in Hall's case, two blips can cause a lot of damage.

Some companies have reported up to a 25% increase in the number of applicants for one position. Employers have options now, and are turning to automated systems to make employment decisions, rating employees based on aptitude, seriousness, and of course: criminal history and credit report.

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The New Era of Obama: White House Background Checks Get Deeper

A recently released application to become a member of Obama's cabinet and administration reveals a new concept for the background check procedure at the White House. In the rapidly changing world of the Internet, many businesses (as many as 74%) do a standard Internet search on new candidates, especially those who will be filling an executive position.

Obama's application is 63 pages long. The New York Times has posted a copy at their website. It consists mostly of traditional background information, but there in addition, there are questions that have never been asked before:

"Writings: Please list, and if readily available, provide a copy of each book, article, column or publication (including but not limited to any posts or comments on blogs or other websites) you have authorized individually or with others. Please list all aliases or 'handles' you have used to communicate on the Internet."

The scope of the check is far reaching. Obama is looking specifically for information that might "suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to your family or the President Elect if it were made public..."

It is well known that people in the public eye receive an intense amount of scrutiny and any dirty laundry the media or the competition can find on them will be aired eventually. The Internet poses a specific breed of vulnerability. Every body leaves a trail on the Internet, but the anonymity is often what lures people to be more open and fresh. Obama is attempting the deepest level of character checking by looking at what people do when they feel nobody can see them.

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Air Marshals Lack Proper Background Checks, Endager Lives

In a recent survey conducted on the Air Marshals of the US, many discrepancies in the background of the marshals were found. After 9/11, the US Air Marshal force was increased by thousands (though the exact number of marshals is classified) in an attempt to protect and reassure passengers on commercial flights.

The Federal Air Marshal Service is an elite group of agents, charged with making split-second decisions; they hold the lives of innocent passengers in their hands. It is proper that they should be investigated thoroughly, and it is true that they are required to undergo many stages of vetting before being allowed to serve. The marshals can't serve if convicted of a federal crime, leaving room for misdemeanors, such as DUI though TSA policies state that employees who drive drunk "demonstrate a disregard of TSA's mission." 84% of American citizens interviewed felt that a drunk driving conviction should bar the marshal from service.

Crimes committed by marshals while in service are on the rise. Only a fraction have been charged, but the seriousness of the crimes are astonishing. Air Marshals have:

• Taken bribes
• Been found sleeping on planes
• Pulled a gun during a parking dispute
• Left a gun in the airplane lavatory, to have it found by a teenager
• Hired a hit-man to kill his wife
• Smuggled drugs using high security clearance
• Committed bank fraud
• Hired a female escort and held her hostage using his handcuffs and gun
• Smuggled weapons from Afghanistan

The federal agency had better step up their hiring procedure, lives are state, security is at stake. But the agency has actually loosened it's hiring standards in recent years:

• Recruits no longer have to pass the confined space firearms test that determines accuracy in a space the size of an airplane
• They no longer have to pass the written psychological exam, or the oral interview with a psychologist
• Recruits no longer have to have law enforcement experience. The agency began hiring TSA screeners in 2005

The marshals themselves are getting fed up with the lack of standards and the potential smear on the agencies reputation. The female escort who was held hostage summed it up best by saying, the outcome was "horrific" and that the public should be scared, "He's the only one on an airplane with a freakin' weapon, and he's supposed to have it to be protecting us."

USA Today Article

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Norwich, CT Gives Convicts a Chance

City Council members of Norwich, Connecticut are hearing from advocates wanting change in the application process for city employees. The group: Think Outside the Box, advocates delaying a criminal background check until the applicants qualifications have been determined. They want ex-criminals to have a fair judgement of their skills before having to check the box that states they have been convicted of a crime.

Employment is one of the the biggest limitations facing convicted criminals after they are released from prison. The advocates stress that it is not about trying to put sex offenders where they don't belong, but about trying to help people get back on their feet after being released from their punishment. Cities in New England are considering the change, and Boston has begun implementation of the new policy.

Once the applicant passes through the job qualification procedure, they will have to admit to their crimes, and are expected to speak frankly on the matter. It will be up to the hiring manager to make the final decision and they are granted full prudence on the decision-making process.

The procedure change is good, in a way, because criminals who have served their time are considered to be "rehabilitated." However, most people arrested for criminal offenses have prior arrest records and records in more than one state. (Federal Bureau of Investigation). Taking a chance on criminals by providing them a job might give them enough reason to stay off the streets and out of the life of crime. The fall-out from this program could be impressive, or it could work. I know I'll be waiting to see how it pans out.

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