Forged identity papers, fake college records, concealed criminal records, and senior executives who have assumed the identity of dead people to hide a murky past--no trick is too low for today's Irish employee.
Fraudulent job applicants and even long established employees are coming under even closer scrutiny to ensure they are everything they claim to be.
"My eyes popped open and my jaw literally dropped when I first started to discover things about people through this job," recalls Joey Lyons, general manager of screening specialists CheckBack International. "We had one senior manager with a leading multinational who had falsified his entire life history. We were called in to work with the company's EMEA HR director who was under some pressure himself as this manager was effectively senior to him.
"We had been called in to screen the entire existing staff when we discovered this senior manager's false records. It took a lot of work because he told us we were mistaken. It turned out that we were right. Eventually he left the company."
CheckBack's screening has unearthed cases such as an airport baggage handler with a criminal record (and access to the plane's cargo hold), vindictive former employers telling lies about ex-employees who had trusted them enough to name them as a referee, and every shade of bill absconder and ne'er-do-well.
Be warned: keeping your slate clean for a few years is no longer enough. CheckBack conducts a comprehensive screening of the last 10 years of a person's life, longer in some cases.
Between 30% and 40% of job applicants are estimated to mislead potential employers about their education record, their professional qualifications and previous employment record. Over 25% of all job applicants admit they are willing to commit fraud to get the job they want, and 85% of serious fraud is carried out on the inside by a company's own staff.
Most recruitment agencies pre-screen applicants in advance of interview stage, but so many dodgy characters slip through the basic filtering services that single source security and risk management firm FreightWatch created its Dublin subsidiary CheckBack International five years ago to meet demand.
FreightWatch was founded in 1998 by ex-Irish Army NCOs who went into business to provide security to large multinational firms. The company now employs around 1,300 staff in nine countries worldwide. For example, FreightWatch is the industry leader in South America.
CheckBack's business has grown 50% in the last 12 months, though it only needs a staff of around 20 in its Dublin office as its investigations are mostly online and phone-based. As such, it is not very labour intensive.
Among untruthful job applicants, around 30% falsify their education records, while another 30% alter their employment history. Of course, different industries face different detection issues.
"Telecoms firms suffer a lot from fake driving licenses, people who claim to have a van driver's license when they only have a regular license," explains Joey Lyons.
"In one part of Dublin and in Limerick we had a very well-known telecoms company who were targeted by a band of thieves who wanted to use their vans to case people's homes. The branded van would give them access to people's houses.
"The crime hit rate tends to go up when you're dealing with jobs that are low wage and high commission.
"Some cases are more innocent, but significant nonetheless. You might have an accountant with an ACCA qualification claiming to be 'chartered' when he is not yet finished with the exams. The job might require the full qualification, so he'll stretch the truth a little.
"However, we can't leave anything through. We sign off on all certificates for these applications. In effect, we indemnify our client companies against fraud. We're in business five years and we have never been brought to court yet."
FactFile
Work life
Joey Lyons has been general manager of CheckBack for the last two years.
A student entrepreneur--he set up his first business, Laurence Gent's Wear in Kildare, while still at college--he manages a company with a staff of six based in Dublin, but with backup personnel including researchers, linguists and private investigators who, between them, give him a screening service across a range of disciplines and in 20 different languages and dialects. Aged 37, he studied business studies at Carlow IT and holds a Spanish Intermediate Level 3 certificate from the Institute Cervantes in Santander in Spain.
He has just started a diploma in management through the University of Leicester.
Joey is married to Ysabel, who is Spanish, and they have two children, Ruben and David. He divides his time between Dublin and Santander, Spain.
