Aspiring Conservative leader (and potential Prime Minister) Andrea Leadsom hit the headlines last week when she was accused of exaggerating her CV, suggesting that she had undertaken more senior roles than she in fact had.

It’s a problem that many businesses – large and small – face in recruitment. How reliable is the information contained in a candidate’s CV?

Most small businesses are unlikely to have the time, or resources, to undertake full background checks on potential candidates. And indeed it hardly creates trust between you and your potential employee if you feel you have to verify every aspect of a candidate’s career history. Having said that, a quick comparison with their LinkedIn profile might be useful!

Clearly, if you discover that a candidate has lied outright (claiming they have a qualification they don’t, or worked in a role or for a company they didn’t) you can withdraw a job offer or even dismiss after they have started.

But in most cases, it will be that a candidate has perhaps oversold their experience. What to do then?

It’s worth remembering that a CV is a marketing document. It is the person’s attempt to impress you as their potential new employer, so it’s understandable that they will want to put a positive spin on their achievements. After all, you don’t put in your brochure or website things like “our products are pretty good but battery life is better in our competitors” And it’s also a fact that individuals and their employers will often collude to make job titles sound more important and prestigious. “Senior HR Executive” implies there are more junior ones when in fact there may not be!

It’s a further reminder that recruitment should be a rigorous process Use interviews to test out the claims in detail. Everyone will accentuate the positive, but good questioning techniques (not this sort of nonsense) and effective listening will allow you to get a better picture of the candidate in front of you and what they actually have done. And you can then decide whether they have broadly the right skills and experience for the role or if you’ve been seduced by their marketing skill!

After all, we don’t complain about advertising unless it’s deliberately misleading; treat your candidates’ CVs in the same way.