HR: The Invisible Men

Upon being told that President Calvin Coolidge had just died, Dorothy Parker (American poet, wit and satirist) responded, “How can they tell?”

Sadly, I fear that the same words could be applied to the HR Profession unless something changes pretty soon.

Over recent months, the pages of the national press have been filled with the debate and moral outrage over the excesses of the bonuses paid within the UK banking system. Yet the contribution from the HR community has been practically non-existent.

Comment on the situation from either individual HR Directors within the banking sector (and here’s a challenge: name one!) or the CIPD has been less than negligible. The profession seems to be increasingly populated by Invisible (and Inaudible) Men.

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought that reward and recognition was part of HR’s remit?

Or perhaps the HR function is simply aiming to outsource any activity beginning with the letter R. Recruitment: pass it to a third party; Redundancy: we’ll get an outplacement consultancy to manage that; Reward and Recognition: that’s something for the Remuneration Committee.

At this rate, HR will resemble the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland:

This time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” 

Dear HR colleagues: there one thing beginning with R that can’t be outsourced: Responsibility. It’s time to take it and make the profession’s views heard. Failure to do so is to risk allegations of irrelevance.

And we don’t want that, do we?

Recruiters beware: this man is dangerous!

The man above is Trevor. Trevor works for a financial services organisation in Bristol in the South West of England.

He may look innocent, but in fact he's the most dishonest man in the world. If you are in any way involved in the recruitment sector, you need to be very, very wary of him.

Let me tell you why.

A number of separate research projects have revealed some disturbing facts about the truthfulness of candidates' CV. Here are the chilling results of these surveys:

• In a recent study of 3700 CVs by the Risk Advisory Group, 20% were found to contain significant untruths concerning matters such as experience and academic qualifications.
• The same study revealed over 50% of CVs included one or more accuracy, such as the real reason for leaving the most recent job.
• A separate survey (by Powerchex) found that UK job applicants were three times more likely to lie on their CVs than those from the rest of the world.
• This survey also found that 22% of British applicants' CVs contained either falsehoods or embellishments
• In contrast only 4% of CVs from Asian candidates contained dodgy information.
• The worst discrepancy rate was in the financial services sector in the South West of England where 25% of CVs were found to have at least one discrepancy.
• The most honest applicants came from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
• A further study by Experian revealed that 12% of men, but only 7% of women admit to lying on their CVs
• According to the CIPD, 20% of British workers are prepared to get a parent or friend to pose as a referee.

So you can see why Trevor is to be feared. He's male. He's From the UK. He's from the South West. He works in financial services.

The public are warned. Do not approach this man. He is thought to be armed with a deadly weapon.

His CV.

Further frightening reading from the dungeons of HR Case Studies: Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said (Mark Twain)

Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said (Mark Twain)

"I've looked at your draft CV and letter of application. It doesn't say that you passed your exams in either English or Maths. Assuming that you did, then you need to add them to your qualifications. If you actually didn't, then I'd add them anyway, because, let's face it, everybody lies about their qualifications these days, and nobody in HR ever bothers to check up on you"

Some form of joke? Sadly not. These were the words spoken to a former colleague of mine a number of years ago by the HR Director of a division within a major and well-known UK organisation.

It would be nice to think that in the intervening period the situation had changed, but the recent six-month suspended prison sentence and order to pay £9,600 in compensation given to a senior NHS HR manager who lied on her CV indicates that the temptation to lie about one's qualifications is still very much with us.

As reported in this week's Personnel Today, Kerrie Devine of Lympstone, Devon, falsely claimed she held a degree in Human Resource Management and said she was part way through a Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development course when she applied for a promotion at Devon primary care trust in 2007.

Last week, following an investigation by the NHS Counter Fraud Service, Devine pleaded guilty to six counts of fraud by false representation at Exeter Crown Court. As well as the fine, she must also carry out 150 hours of unpaid community work.

NHS HR manager who lied on CV ordered to pay £9,600 in costs

• Does the fact that this instance of fraud was perpetrated by an HR professional make the offence even more worthy of punishment?

UPDATE: HR manager sentenced for lying about qualifications