Former employees are increasingly loath to give details on references, but is checking profiles on social network sites really appropriate?

A SENIOR EXECUTIVE with a misleading CV risks his own and his company’s credibility. For Patrick Imbardelli, former top executive with InterContinental Hotels Group, and David Edmondson, former chief executive and president of the American electronics retailer Radio Shack, the exposure of ropey CV entries meant both shame and resignation.

Imbardelli was head of InterContinental’s Asia Pacific operations and tipped for promotion to the board, when he suddenly left the company this summer after an internal review of the university qualifications he had listed on his CV when he joined the company.

Similarly in 2006, Edmondson parted company with Radio Shack after his claims to two degrees were challenged.

The big boys might get the embarrassing publicity, but those further down the food chain are just as likely to play fast and loose with their CVs. A few years back a survey of CVs found that more than half contained lies and inaccuracies, involving everything from gaps in employment histories to falsified qualifications and fraud committed against previous employers.

And human resources shouldn’t get too sanctimonious. In a survey by Reed Business Information, one in ten HR professionals admitted they had lied while applying for a job.

Steve Huxham, chairman of the Recruitment Society, said: “Twenty years ago all that candidates would talk up was their salary. Now all the careers advice is to talk ourselves up. That creates a climate in which people worry about underselling themselves because everyone else is talking themselves up.”

However, Huxham said this wasn’t the only development helping to turn pre-employment checks into a minefield for business. The increase in short-term contracts and social-networking sites were also contributing.

According to employment lawyers, firms are struggling to keep up with pre-hiring checks while terrorism, fraud and the need to protect company reputations have made them more necessary than ever.

While recruiters are fond of saying that people are a business’s greatest asset, Trag’s Salimah Remtulla said they are also its greatest risk.

Some experts say that employers who use social-networking sites and other internet sources during vetting are over-zealous, but Royal Mail’s vetting procedures were judged inadequate by Postcomm, the regulator that slapped a record £11.4m fine on the postal service last year for failing to prevent mail being lost, damaged or stolen.

It is okay to provide information about how many sick days a former employee had and whether he or she received performance-related bonuses or was involved in disciplinary proceedings, but matters of opinion ought to be avoided.

He said there were now many ways of inquiring into prospective employees. They included checks at the Criminal Records Bureau, credit ratings, county court judgments and a simple search on Google.

However, “checks have to be proportionate to the risk”, he said, adding that pre-employment drug screening was also likely in “safety critical” industries. The difficulty, said Willmott, was balancing an individual’s privacy with a duty of care and concern about company reputation. Like many others, he is uneasy about the use many employers are making of the internet for checks.

“Employers ought to think of what will happen to their brand if they become known as operating like Big Brother. That will have a negative effect on how potential employees view their organisation.”

However, Mark Higgins at Ralli, a firm of solicitors, said that employers were perfectly entitled to look at information on the internet. “You don’t need permission,” he said. “The information there is public.”

Higgins draws a distinction between knowing things about a candidate from a social networking site, blog or YouTube video, and allowing that information to have a negative influence on the recruitment process that can then be challenged under discrimination laws. He said recruiters discriminate all the time in areas not covered by law. They might discriminate against someone with ginger hair, for example, but there is no discrimination law — yet — that covers this.

“Senior management needs to formulate a policy and get a consensus view on what is going to be part of the recruitment process,” he said. “If social-networking sites are to be included, there should be guidelines about how they are to be used and records need to be kept in case there is a legal challenge later.”

Huxham believes there is already a backlash against internet use. Donna Miller, European HR director at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, recently argued that looking up applicants on social-networking sites was akin to going into someone’s house and searching through their bedroom drawers.

Huxham leans towards the same position. “We have to draw a line at what employers can show an interest in. There is an argument for employers exercising self-restraint and keeping off the social-networking sites. You wouldn’t expect a potential employer to eavesdrop on a dinner party in your front room.”