There are very few job candidates who would not spice up their CV with a little bit of extra pizzazz in their accomplishments to make it sound impressive to potential employers. As a matter of fact, the CV is meant to boost a candidate’s chances at employment probability; after all, and knowing how to package one’s skills is a talent in and of itself. But sometimes, things can go really beyond acceptable behaviour and some candidates add truly misleading exaggerations, falsehoods, or distortions to look good for the employer. Although this might have earned them a job somehow, it will not end up well in the long run because a wrongful but convincing CV will create a lot of preconceived mismatches and open issues between the employees and the employer. Here below is a list of four areas of CV information that can be misleading or arbitrary, accompanied by some possible ways to detect their validity.
1) Language Proficiency
Many job candidates identify the number of languages they speak and the proficiency level on their CVs. Being able to speak multiple languages, especially here in Myanmar both English and Burmese are spoken in the workplace, can be a tremendous advantage, and many job seekers actively leverage that to earn themselves a spot in their next career move. The problem with blanket language proficiency statements are that they’re too arbitrary, frequently identified by the CV writer with no official governing body, and there are so many subsequently questions that should be asked about these proficiency claims.
One such question is the skill area; in which skill area (business, conversational, educational, etc) of a language is the candidate most proficient in? Although Romance languages like Spanish, French, and Italian do not require learners to exert a special effort to learning how to write the alphabets, rendering it possible to focus on the rest of the skills throughout the language learning journey, many Asian languages like Japanese, Chinese and Korean have their own writing systems, thus requiring the learners to devote much time to learn how to write if they’re intending to be literate in a language. This is one example of how the skill gaps can arise when it comes to language learners. In such a case, when the candidate claims their proficiency level to be high, there is no possible way of predicting which skills they’re referring to unless otherwise specified.
Similarly, when a candidate claims that their language proficiency is of elementary, intermediate, or advanced levels, the controversy rises again because three levels to rank the language proficiency is at best a loose science and oftentimes unsystematic. There are so many ways to rank levels even with a single language that without a standard scale it would be impossible to know what a person means. Although it is such a tricky task to identify whether the candidate is being honest or exaggerating regarding their language proficiency by looking at their CV, interviewers are a better place to bring up the question, assess their language proficiency, and see if that is adequate for the candidate’s role. You, as an interviewer, can ask about the language learning approach and the proficiency tests they’ve taken and the designations or levels they’ve achieved just to confirm their CV statements. The most clear way to assess someone’s proclivity for another language is if you can speak the language they’ve added in the CV in the interview or have another trusted expert conduct a conversation. That way, you can make your own assessment of the capacity of the language learned.
Within Myanmar’s employee market, local candidates all generally are able speak Burmese as well as some level of English to those varying degrees. There are also many Burmese people who can speak Mandarin fluently due to family roots and proximity to China. Apart from Burmese and English, competitive employees usually pursue additional Asian languages like Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean while French and German are popular western equivalents among most pursued foreign languages in Myanmar.
2) Work Experience
The fact that a candidate had been in the office of a top-notch company for a month as an intern does not mean that the candidate had a chance to learn all about the work and the company and now is a master of a particular vocation. Unfortunately for their future employers, candidates sometimes tend to make it sound that way; the owners of some CVs omit their timeline of commitment or years of experience at a company, making it ambiguous about their relationship with their past employers.
Another contrary case of this kind would be the candidates showing that they have been with a particular employer for a significantly long period of time although the amount of actual experience earned during this time is very minimal. An example where this is sometimes seen would be freelancers and gig workers. They may have worked for a high-profile company for one or two years but if their employment was nothing more than that of a contingency worker who only had a virtual connection with the employer on a weekly basis. It cannot be assumed that the candidate was able to make the best out of a corporate experience if they were kept at an arm’s length as a contracted worker.
Confirming their actual roles and commitment levels at their past workplaces is as simple as contacting their past employers during reference check. You can call them up and ask them questions about the candidate’s contributions when he or she was with them. Background checks are also an effective way to evaluate the candidates’ past commitments. If you still have more questions about the nature of their previous jobs and if they match the description on a CV, the interview is always a great place to bring them up. An alternative to examine the employees’ competence with their role is to assign them a test project when applicable or put them on probation for a couple of months to see if their performance is satisfactory.
In Myanmar, many students today especially from Yangon turn to extracurricular activities and on-campus duties as a substitute for official internships and corporate work experiences that have begun to rise in popularity only recently. So most of the fresh graduates indicate their university involvement activities as their only professional experiences, when even this definition of professional is questionable. If you’re one of the employers looking to recruit fresh graduates, make sure that the experiences they claim they have on their CV are really valid and are of professional value to your company.
3) Academic Qualifications
Academic qualifications appear to be the least ambiguous kind of statement candidates list on their CVs, but even this seemingly surefire example can be massaged by an unscrupulous actor, and there are a few expectation mismatches that can come with some educational statements. Some collegiate institutions are not officially recognized despite the convincing designations and the degrees they award. Illegitimate educational qualifications can be detrimental for both the candidates and their employers because they do not provide relevant or professionally applicable academic preparations except the falsifying title that prepares absolutely no one for what is to come.
Moreover, employers should also keep a lookout for short-term academic commitments like exchange student trips and virtual educational experiences like online courses on the CVs that can be sometimes packaged as something more than it really was. Although it’s irrefutable that these educational areas can be pragmatic and authentic most of the time, it should always be advised to identify which institutions happen to be the candidates’ alma maters versus a lesser level of engagement with an institution.
The status of the schools can easily be searched online; employers can review the ranking, faculty, alumni profile, and professional network of colleges and universities. International college ranking websites have such categories of information with comparisons made across several accredited tertiary institutions. Although where the candidate went for college should not be of primary consideration while determining their job fit, it is always good to know about what degree obtained from which university.
In Myanmar, several senior recruiters may have some conservative notions about the universities that the candidates come from; some employers only want to recruit alumni from the most selective universities in Myanmar or foreign university graduates, believing that it could distinguish the company’s workforce. But it’s apparently a wrongful ideology. A candidate’s educational background, while important, does not paint a complete picture of what he or she can contribute to the company and its business. So, to reiterate, it’s always good to know that while the educational profile of the candidates is something worth knowing, it should never be a sole distinguishing factor of their professional value.
4) Other Arbitrary Personal Statements
The candidates’ self-claimed personal values, attributes, purpose statements, and more can be quite tough to be determined in terms of validity. Their claims of commitment, dedication, and self-appraisals are usually biased and can be overrated. Apart from structured interviews, assessment centers are usually the best to witness the candidates’ candid and spontaneous behaviours due to the pressure they’re exerted and the atmosphere of tension. Through assessment centers, employers will be able to identify if the candidates really embody the qualities they claim they do. Plus, there’s always a possibility to observe their individualistic aspects during an assessment center to see if their work behaviour matches to the claims made on their CV.
Companies can take all of these factors into consideration now that they’ve validated the statements of a potential new candidate. By using the JobNet.com.mm Online Salary Survey tool by JobNet, you can calculate what bringing a certain candidate into the fold would cost to your company. Further, the CV Import module by JobNet scans all CVs from incoming applicants and pulls information about the candidate from the document, providing and electronic record of the statements someone makes about themselves. The best companies hire the best candidates through JobNet.