The allegations of creative CV writing that are swirling around the soon-to-be-ennobled Charlotte Owen are intriguing and should provide a pause for thought in employers and investors.
We make no judgement on her suitability for the role nor the events which led to her nomination. But people do get creative with their résumés all the time.
For the most part, the people in question – let’s call them candidates for shorthand – would see their ‘errors’ as a fudge, a white lie. Call it what you will, they don’t think they are lying or falsifying. The most common errors tend to be overstating the importance of a candidate’s contribution in a workplace and flexibility with the dates they worked.
Starting with the dates, it is easy to see how a candidate might want to present a period spent out of work as shorter than it actually was. Plenty of people find themselves with gaps on their CVs for perfectly innocent reasons – gardening leave and other non-compete periods are common in more senior staff. But what happens if the candidate was dismissed from the role and this is the reason that they found themselves temporarily adrift or, more seriously, was spending time at his majesty’s pleasure? It does happen.
For more senior employees, media reports often give clarity or directorship records. More junior employees whose media footprint is lighter and who do not sit on boards can be harder to trace. In such cases, a surge in social media use or indeed a step-change in content can be revealing. However, the best way to address this potential issue is to request HR references (this requires permission from the data subject) from previous employers which will provide the dates of employment at a bare minimum.
As to the extent of the role and the level of contribution, this can be much harder to establish from a HR reference, especially in more junior staff. Speaking to former colleagues can really help to delve into this aspect of a candidate’s former career. Confidential referencing is a staple of the modern recruitment process and former colleagues are usually willing to give their commentary freely. Naturally, finding those sources can be difficult when a candidate has been buried deep within a large business, but it is always worth making the effort.
The case of Charlotte Owen presents an unusual situation in that she is someone who, by most accounts, has occupied relatively junior roles hitherto and who is about to catapulted into a position that is usually taken up by people with more of an identifiable career behind them. All the same, it does not speak well that her nomination has passed so far through the process with what appears to be so little interrogation.
It never looks good when it falls to a journalist to do the job that civil servants should have done in the first place. The same applies to senior management appointments – you don’t want the newspapers to point out gaps in your new CEO’s record that you had no idea about.
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