Trust placed in the source of a resume may be misplaced
When looking to hire someone, what is the natural first reaction upon being handed a resume by a headhunter, HR Manager, or company colleague? It may be to remark at how impressive a candidate's credentials are. Or to notice how long their experience is, or how short. It may be to notice that the organization and presentation of the resume is excellent or not so great. It probably is not to wonder if what is written on the paper is true or not. And what is the first reaction upon pulling a resume from the web? No doubt most first reactions are totally different, but there is little reason to believe they should be. When one realizes that many companies have no system in place to verify the verity of claims made in the resumes they receive and act on the first reaction should always be to be a little skeptical. With resumes containing lies and other problems exceeding 85% in some markets, employers should always question the veracity of claims made and trust only after seeing some proof of vetting.  Employers should trust the resume because it they know it was checked, not because of who handed it to them.

When HR Managers are handed a resume from a headhunter, the belief is often that the resume has already been vetted. After all, it is the job of headhunters to provide vetted individuals to their clients, is it not? It may be not. Choosing a headhunter with integrity is important because the incentives not to check a candidate are very much stronger than the one's to check. From the headhunter's point of view, it is almost impossible to vet candidates efficiently and effectively. This doesn't mean all recruiters don't vet candidates, it just means that there are big incentives not to. If a headhunter has a list of 100 potential candidates in the beginning of their search, they cannot possibly vet them all. From their point of view, it would be a colossal wasted cost and headache to do so, as well as delay the search process indefinitely. After all, on average 95% of these candidates won't be seen by anyone. At the shortlist stage, lets say searchers introduce an average of 5 individual candidates. From the point of view of the the client, this is the best stage to do the vetting process. However, vetting even five candidates would require a significant investment from the recruiter. Properly vetting one average candidate takes an average of one day, while vetting executives with long careers takes considerably longer. Vetting five candidates when four out of those five candidates (80%) are not going to be hired anyway is clearly not optimal from the recruiter's point of view. If there was a way to narrow it down, so they could only vet those candidates they were sure the customer would like, they would definitely do it. The way to do that is to wait until the client chooses the one they like. That means that the five candidates introduced may not be vetted.

Once a single best candidate is chosen, now it would seem like the ideal time to run the vetting process and do background checks on that candidate's job history, educational history, and qualifications. However, we once again run into incentive problems. Now that the proverbial needle in the haystack has been found how can the client be told that the candidate they have chosen is damaged goods? Should the recruiter do a background check on the candidate and find that the candidate has misrepresented themselves in some way, they will now be back at square one, having wasted a large amount of their client's and their own time. The search will have to start over and the conundrum of when to run a background check will be no closer to being solved this time as the same incentives to provide the candidate the client likes while minimizing time and cost are still in place. Headhunters can do the math and learn that playing the odds sometimes makes sense from their point of view. If they be quiet and hope that the candidate is who he says he is, the worst that can happen is that the truth will come out and they will have to replace the candidate with a fresh search. On the other hand, if they find some dirt now, the worst-case scenario comes true today. So why look? Employers in a hurry to hire are often willing to play the same odds, knowing that by contract they can always blame the recruiter and get a replacement candidate later should this one 'not work out'. So why ask?

Someone Somewhere Checked This Guy Out
When functional managers are handed a resume from HR, it may never cross their minds that what is in it could be false. After all, they got the resume from within the company. The natural tendency is to believe the resume has already been evaluated and that everything handed to them is therefore true. Surely someone somewhere has checked these people out. What if the resume came from some other source, such as a recommendation from another person in the company. Does the person in the company really know the person they are recommending? Often they don't. Often recommendations come from someone in the company for someone they have only met once or twice. Sometimes they are for people they have never met at all, but have been assured are 'good' from a third-party. The organization doesn't know these facts, however. All they see are resumes, and when there are places to fill and stacks of resumes, one resume looks just like another. How can anyone figure out who is and who isn't legit? Will I be looked at strange if I ask if these people were checked out? Will I insult anyone?

These are the mechanisms of misunderstanding those who misrepresent themselves rely on to work their way into companies. Not doing any background checking on candidates for hire seems innocent enough, but in reality it is playing with fire. Virtually all of the other security problems companies face, from fraud to workplace violence, have some origin in hiring. Hiring the wrong person can have ripple effects throughout the organization causing trouble and problems far from the area of initial mistake. The best way to figure out if a candidate has been vetted is to ask. Hiring managers should ask HR. If HR hasn't done the verification directly, they should ask the source of their resumes for proof of vetting. Ask for a report of what was done to verify the candidates credentials. Without it, one should assume the candidate was never checked. And if the candidate was never vetted, one shouldn't assume that what the company sees is what the company is going to get.