Dealing with
Resume Deceptions
Economies in emerging countries tend to have more dramatic
fluctuations between good times and bad, and are generally more
disruptive than those of mature countries. Not
surprisingly, resumes of senior managers reflect this
reality and even high quality managers can have experienced
extended time out-of-work or in filler positions outside of
their industry or profession.
This fact should not reduce a candidate's value (much) in the
eyes of experienced hiring managers. However, in Asia many
candidates use various common tactics to reduce the unsightly
impact of breaks and blemishes in their resumes. These tricks
are generally not considered fraud but it is up to the
interviewer to ask specifics about each degree and employer
listed on their resume. In most cases, candidates will be
up-front with the truth but interviewers must know the local
market in order to dig out the full truth.
Below are some of the most common resumes tricks that appear in
dealing with senior management candidates in Asia.
Tactic 1:
University listed but
is there a degree?
A large percentage senior management people in Asia begin
advanced degrees but are not able to complete them. The reasons
behind the poor record of completion have to do mainly with the
reality of life in emerging countries: poor transit
infrastructure, onerous family commitments, unstable economies
and so on. It is common for people to have extreme demands
on their time with long hours at work and a 3-hour daily
commute, people can run out of money for studies because of
family medical emergency, an unexpected employment change can
disrupt studies, and so on.
Candidates with completed advanced degrees should be looked upon
favourably given the environment. People with incomplete
degrees, on the other hand, should not be downgraded because of
it unless there have been too many of them (and they are
associated with too frequent job changes).
Candidates with incomplete degrees will usually list the
university and the degree of study but can be less clear whether
it was completed. The interviewer needs to ask specifically
whether each listed degree was completed in full.
Tactic 2:
Free Enterprise "Universities"
In emerging countries there are big variations in quality among
educational institutions. There are a small number of
leading schools at the top and a multitude of less credible
degree-granting "universities" at the bottom with many
variations in between.
Educational institutions in emerging are often
privately-owned and can naturally provide great differences in
service quality depending on the needs and competence of the
entrepreneur owners. To keep costs low, substandard
instructors can be employed, students may have no access to
useable equipment for hands-on training and course oversight may
be poor. In striving to please their customers, degree
certificates can often be provided without completing a full course
load. Non-local hiring managers must take a lot of effort
to become knowledgeable about the various levels of first tier,
second tier and non-tier schools to know when to discount or
even eliminate academic credentials.
Tactic 3:
The Functional Resume
The vast majority of recruiters despise non-chronological
resumes because they are so difficult to understand career
progressions of candidates. Hiring managers want to know how
people got from one position to another in a clear manner.
The
so-called "functional" resume is supposedly organized into
categories of skills and experience around broad titles such as:
problem solving, detail mastery, communications, turn-around,
and so on. Experienced recruiters know it as the format most used by
candidates with things to hide. Because of its employer
unfriendly layout, interviewers must spend much more time
understanding candidate history and they are often suspicious
(and irritated) about having to do so.
Tactic 4:
Dates in Years Only
Another common resume trick is to exclude the months from the
dates of employment. This is fine for candidates who spend
periods longer than 5 years at employers. But candidates who
have made frequent job changes need to make more complete
disclosure. For instance, if the employment date is listed only
as 2010, it is not clear whether the person worked for 12 months
or one month at the employer. An experienced interviewer will
immediately wonder whether he or she is hiding something. And in
any case, lack of clarity by a senior manager in an official
document like a resume will be highlighted as a concern by any
experienced hiring manager.
Tactic 5:
Filler Positions
The majority of senior candidates in emerging countries come
from upper-class families. Many have close relatives with family
businesses. When candidates are in-between corporate jobs, it is
not uncommon for them to claim they worked for family
enterprises. Often they do meaningful work for these companies
but sometimes they don't.
More commonly, their functions at
these family enterprises are not related to the rest of their
careers but there is more flexibility to adapt titles to suit
appearances. Hiring managers and recruiters need to understand
clearly who is behind the employers candidates claim to work for
and the actual work that was done.
Tactic 6:
Started at the Top
Many candidates list only their last position at previous
employers and leave out starting and intermediary roles. There is certainly no deception intended in such
documents but interviewers need to understand the career progress
of candidates and ask for specific details. Senior executives
(especially high quality ones) typically spend long periods at
employers and perform different roles at steadily more senior
levels.
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Getting Ready For The Deluge: Outsourcing in Philippines
by Chalre Associates senior staff
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[PDF file, 62KB]
The
Economist Intelligence Unit of the Economist magazine
asked Chalre Associates' Chairman, Richard Mills, to
write a chapter about the Philippine outsourcing sector
in its annual Business Guide Book. The material
provides a Executive Briefing on the progress and major
issues facing this industry that is certainly one of
most significant growth stories in the world.
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Asia Pacific Mining
Conference 2007 - Report
by Chalre Associates senior staff
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file, 28KB]
The 7th Asia Pacific Mining Conference put on by the Asean
Federation of Mining Associations was perhaps the
largest such event in the region. Richard Mills,
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the prominent mining people who presented.
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The State of BPO in Philippines: Dan Reyes Speaks
by Chalre Associates senior staff
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Richard Mills, Chairman of Chalre Associates,
interviewed Dan Reyes of Sitel for ComputerWorld (US) recently to
get his views on the state of the BPO industry in Philippines. Dan
presented US readers with compelling information to support his view
that Philippines is currently seen as the "Number 1" option by
global companies sending BPO work to offshore destinations.
Dan Reyes is easily one of most experienced Business Process
Outsourcing (BPO) managers in the Asia Pacific region and the world.
He is head of the extremely successful Philippine operations of
Sitel, the world's largest call center organization. Among other
things, he is a founder and former president of the Business
Processing Association of the Philippines.
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