Possibility of verifying the potential employee’s CV by the employer

Abstract

In this article the results of a study on the possibility of verifying the potential employee’s CV by the employer were presented. This survey covered the entire Poland and was conducted on a sample of 526 cities and municipalities offices by using the mystery client technique – a person contacting the office presented herself as a employee in a non-existent company and asked for verification whether the fictional candidate underwent the student internship at the given institution. In 84.4% of the cases it was possible to get a true information. In 3% of the cases employees of offices stated that the candidate had undergone practice at their office, 15 of them told researchers that superiors were satisfied with her work. In other cases it was unable to get an answer – because of the refusal to answer, lack of information, lack of opportunity to contact with a competent person because of her absence in the next seven days or not obtaining desired information in spite of making 10 calls. On the base of the conducted study it was found that the employer usually has the possibility of verifying the candidate's CV and the procedure does not require too much. Therefore it was recommended that recruiters used this opportunity to employ the candidates with the greatest real experience.