In recent months Canada has lost several well known retailers. This reshaping of our retail landscape has presented us with an opportunity and a challenge all wrapped up in a not so easy to open package. This opportunity, is a much larger candidate pool to hire from growing. The pressure on candidates to stand out is tempting them to embellish their resumes. The challenge, is how to spot the embellishments.

Approximately 80% of every resume you have and will receive has embellishments of some variety. These range from elevated titles and include qualifications that haven’t been completed, to wrong dates of employment or listing a false membership to a professional association.

Did you know, that one-third of hiring managers have seen an increase in resume embellishments in recent years, only fifty-eight percent of hiring managers said they catch the lies. These statistics are from a survey, that was conducted online by Harris Poll and included a representative sample of 2,188 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries and company sizes. 1270 out of almost 2200 hiring managers caught the lies, FRIGHTENING!!!

There are certain embellishments candidates try to slip past hiring managers more frequently than others. According to employers, the most common lies they catch relate to the following:

• Embellished skill set – 57% • Embellished responsibilities – 55% • Dates of employment – 42% • Job title – 34% • Academic degree – 33% • Companies worked for – 26% • Accolades/awards – 18%

Here is the good news, a CareerBuilder survey suggests that skepticism is on the rise, but not by much. In December 2013, just 33% of hiring managers told CareerBuilder they spent “more than two minutes” reading each resume. A year later that number has only jumped to 42% — this is still fewer than half.

50% of hiring managers said