Judging by the overwhelming response to last month’s Rewards survey, Australian employers are hot under the collar about job applicants stretching the truth on their resumés.

Almost 70 per cent of Rewards members said they were aware of having interviewed or hired someone who had lied about their qualifications or achievements. Another 13 per cent were unsure but less than one in five were confident that they had never been hoodwinked by applicants.

It seems that lying has become standard practice in some quarters of the job market with the majority of survey respondents (63 per cent) admitting that they knew someone who had supplied false information to potential employers.

When asked if their company had ever hired someone on the basis of false information, 45 per cent of Rewards members believed their company had done so. A third of respondents were unsure but only 24 per cent said they had never hired a person who had lied.

Australian research has shown that one in seven people try to win a position by presenting false information about their skills or exaggerating their experience. They also frequently lied about theor reasons for leaving previous jobs, and attempted to cover gaps in their work history by falsifying how long they had spent in a previous job or how long they had been unemployed.

In the US, the problem seems to be even worse with estimates suggesting that 30 to 40 per cent of all job applications include some false or inflated facts.

While jobseekers are encouraged to present themselves in the best possible light, there is a vast difference between making a resume lively, and lying about credentials or qualifications, or painting a misleading picture by omitting important facts.

Employers are usually quick to spot false claims. While it doesn’t always prevent a person from getting the job, their inability to perform usually results in termination a short way down the track.