J Bus Psychol (2007) 22:19 DOI 10.

1007/s10869-007-9048-7

Lying on Job Applications: The Effects of Job Relevance, Commission, and Human Resource Management Experience
Jennifer L. Wood James M. Schmidtke Diane L. Decker

Published online: 6 July 2007 Springer Science+Business, LLC 2007

Abstract This research examined three factors related to misrepresentations on job applications: the job relevance of the information, the effects of overt misrepresentation compared to omission, and the impact of human resource (HR) management experience. Dependent measures included the extent to which misrepresentations were perceived as lies and inuenced hiring intentions. In general, higher job relevance and overt misrepresentations increased the perception of misrepresentations as lies and decreased the hiring intentions. Further, persons with HR management experience were less likely to see misrepresentations as lies and more likely to hire applicants. Implications for future research and managerial practice are discussed. Keywords Lying Dishonesty Job application

It is not unusual for job applicants to exaggerate their qualications in an attempt to present themselves more favorably and obtain a job. Although exact gures are not known, estimates of individuals who exaggerate their resumes range from 40% to 70% (George and Marett 2004). According to ADP Screening and Selection Services, in 2001, approximately 3040% of the 2.8 million background checks it conducted revealed that applicants misrepresented themselves. The most commonly misrepresented information relates to education and job experience (Babcock 2003). Further, Robinson et al. (1998) surveyed graduating seniors and found that the majority
J. L. Wood J. M. Schmidtke (&) D. L. Decker Management Department, Craig School of Business, California State University Fresno, 5245 North Backer Avenue M/S PB 7, Fresno, CA 93740-8001, USA e-mail: jmschmidtke@csufresno.edu

believed that employers expected a degree of exaggeration on resumes. Many human resource (HR) professionals recognize that lying on resumes or applications is a serious problem (Babcock 2003). In addition, hiring individuals who lie on their resumes can create nancial and legal burdens for organizations (Babcock 2003), including recruiting and hiring replacements, potential lost customers, and legal fees/settlements associated with negligent hiring claims. One of the problems for organizations attempting to manage this phenomenon is that truth is not an absolute concept (Bok 1978; Saxe 1991). That is, under certain circumstances, people might not consider some misrepresentations as lies. One example of this is when an individual omits, on a resume or application, a job that he/she only held a short time. Consider another example in which an individual deliberately misstates the number of employees he/she supervised as 15 when in reality there were only 10 subordinates. Some individuals might consider both scenarios as lies while others might not consider either situation to be a lie. When determining whether an applicant lied, individuals may distinguish between information that is omitted and information that is purposely misrepresented. Further, it could be argued that some of these lies may be inconsequential enough that recruiters might be willing to overlook them and hire the individual. Given that the consequences of hiring a liar can be substantial to the organization and that there may not be a clear cut denition of lying with respect to applications and resumes, it is important to understand factors that affect whether individuals dene misrepresentations as lies. Past research has examined the amount and type of information on application forms that is falsied, as well as the reasons why individuals falsify information (Broussard and Brannen 1986; Goldstein 1971; The Omnia Group 1999).

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Broussard and Brannen (1986) identify the most common misrepresentations on resumes as job history, job responsibilities, job titles, compensation, and academic credentials. ADP Screening and Selection Services (Babcock 2003) found similar results for background checks: 44% of applicants lied about work histories, 41% lied about education, and 23% lied about credentials or licenses. Broussard and Brannen (1986) argue that individuals lie on applications and resumes simply because they desire better jobs and more money. Others suggest that downsizing and a poor economy lead to more resume ination (Bachler 1995; Kluger 2002). In addition, resume-writing services, and industry practices also have escalated the amount of misrepresentations occurring on resumes and applications (Broussard and Brannen 1986). One area not thoroughly researched is the perceptions of those who review job applications. This is particularly important since an increased number of companies are conducting background checks on potential employees (Archer 2005) and consequently, applicants lies are more likely to be detected. Further a 2002 study of small businesses and Fortune 100 companies indicated that only 36% of respondents red employees after uncovering a lie on their job applications (Prater and Kiser 2002), while the majority did not. In order to better understand the consequences of lies on applications, it is critical to examine whether these misrepresentations are viewed as lies by both applicants and those who hire. In addition, it is also important to determine how the job relevance of the misrepresented information affects these perceptions, and the decision to hire a candidate. The current paper examines these three issues by comparing perceptions of college students to those of HR professionals. The following sections will discuss lying and types of deception, the typical areas in which misrepresentations occur, and nally, the reasons why individuals misrepresent information. Before discussing specic research regarding lying we need to state our denition of lying and conceptually relevant issues. We follow the lead of other research in the area and dene lying as, intentionally conveying an impression that the communicator believes to be false (DePaulo et al. 1996, p. 377). There are two important components to this denition. First, it is an intentional act. Second, it does not require an overt statement or act by the communicator (applicant). Failure to correct an assumption made by the target of the lie (recruiter) or silence on the part of the communicator could constitute deception under this denition. In addition to the denition of lying, we also consider the materiality of the lie. We borrow the concept of materiality from the accounting profession which denes a material misstatement as one that, the judgment of a reasonable person relying on the information would have been changed or inuenced by the...misstatement

(American Institute of Certied Public Accountants 1984, p. 10). Although this concept is typically applied to nancial data, it could be applied to other information as well. For example, the judgment of a reasonable person probably would not be affected by an applicants statement that he/she has a clean driving record when, in fact, there is a driving under the inuence (DUI) citation which will expire in 1 week. In this case, the statement would be immaterial. These components of lying may create problems for recruiters. First, the issue of intentionality for certain types of misrepresentations may be difcult to determine. When applicants omit information from a resume or application (fail to include a previous employer, for example), two alternative explanations exist. First, it may be that these applicants intentionally left the information off their resume or job application. They may be trying to create a false impression of their credentials, or they may have believed that the misstatement was not material. Second, the omission may be an oversight or a mistake, that is, the applicant either forgot to include the information, or did not correctly understand the request for information. The problem here is that intentions cannot be discerned simply by the fact that the information was not included on the resume or application. Recruiters may make assumptions regarding applicants intentions to determine whether the misstatement was a lie of omission. When applicants engage in deception by commission, that is, make untrue statements, the intent to make the statement is not questionable. The applicants intent to deceive, however, may be questionable. When individuals make misstatements two possibilities exist. One possibility is that individuals believe that the misstatement they are making is not material. So individuals in a situation like the example above, who fail to report their DUI, may think that they are not deceiving a recruiter. Since the DUI will no longer be in effect when they start the job, they may not believe this misstatement to be a lie. The second possibility is that applicants who make a misstatement are knowingly trying to deceive the recruiter. Again, recruiters may try to determine the applicants intention when assessing whether or not the misstatement constitutes a lie. In the case of commission, it may be more difcult for recruiters to believe that the misstatement and deception was unintended. Therefore we hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 1a: Commission is more likely to be seen as lying when compared to omission. Hypothesis 1b: Applicants who engage in misstatements of omission are more likely to be hired than are applicants who engage in commission.

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A second problem recruiters may face when determining whether a misstatement is a lie is the materiality of that lie. Recall that materiality is a nancial accounting concept and is determined by whether the misstatement would alter the decision of a reasonable person. In the case of a job applicant, the materiality is most likely related to the relevance of the misstatement for the job to be performed. For example, high school extra-curricular activities may not be considered relevant for a job to pack produce at a food processing plant. Thus, a recruiter may not consider misstatements of irrelevant information to be lies. The misinformation presented by an applicant who claimed to be the secretary of the French club when, in fact, he/she was not a member of the club, may not be perceived as a lie for the purposes of lling an agricultural packer position. Conversely, having completed a surgical residency would be relevant information for an individual applying for a orthopedic surgeon position. This is supported by a wealth of literature on selection which nds that the predictive validity of different selection criteria (e.g., work experience, education etc.) is job specic (see Hunter and Hunter 1984; Schmidt and Hunter 1998, for a review). We would expect that as the relevance of the misrepresented information increases, the more likely those misrepresentations are likely to be seen as lies and to, consequently, affect hiring decisions. Stated formally:

tolerant of misrepresentations on applications or resumes. A 1986 survey of the American Society for Personnel Administration found that 97% of respondents, vehemently condemned the practice of resume fraud and the people who perpetrate it, (Broussard and Brannen 1986, p. 134). Further, recruiters are more likely to be aware of the potential liabilities associated with negligent hiring and therefore will be more severe in their judgments of misrepresentations and applicants who engage in this behavior. Stated formally:

Hypothesis 3a: Persons with HR management backgrounds are more likely to perceive misrepresentations on applications as lies than will persons with non-human resource management backgrounds. Hypothesis 3b: Persons with HR management backgrounds are less likely to hire someone who has misrepresented information than will persons with non-human resource management backgrounds.

Study One The purpose of study one was to identify and validate job relevant items. Method Participants Surveys were collected from undergraduate management students at a large state university in California. Individuals were assured condentiality and given minimal extra credit for their participation. In addition, participants were given the incentive of being entered into a drawing for one of two $50.00 prizes. A total of 114 surveys were collected. Ninety-eight of those surveys contained complete information and were used for the analysis. Apparatus and Procedure Six occupations were chosen for the pilot survey because of their familiarity to students: (a) two occupations which required degrees, (Registered Nurse and High School Teacher), (b) two which required some type of certication or a special license, (Mechanic and Truck Driver), and (c) two for which little or no education is required, (Fast Food Worker and Packer of Agricultural Produce). Each participant was given a questionnaire containing two occupations to rate. The order in which the occupations were given was randomized to avoid potential order effects for occupations.

Hypothesis 2a: As the specic job relevance of the misrepresented information increases, the more likely the misrepresentations will be perceived as lies. Hypothesis 2b: As the specic job relevance of the misrepresented information increases, the less likely the applicant is to be hired. Finally, there may be differences in perceptions of misrepresentations as lies, in general, between applicants and recruiters. According to a 1997 survey of recent college graduates conducted by Reid Psychological Systems, 95% of students are willing to tell at least one false statement to get a job, and 41% have already done so (McShulskis 1997, p. 22). One reason for this may be that lying to a potential employer may be seen as less dishonest. Robinson et al. (1998) studied nal semester undergraduates and found that they believed lying to a romantic partner was wrong, but that employers expect applicants to exaggerate to a certain degree. Another reason why applicants may nd misrepresentations on job applications more acceptable is that it is becoming more common for individuals to use professional resume writing services. These services often teach applicants how to inate their resumes as part of the job-seeking game (Broussard and Brannen 1986). Recruiters, on the other hand, may be less

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Measures For each occupation, statements regarding a hypothetical applicants education, credentials, driving record, criminal background, job history, and extra curricular activities were presented. Items were generated using generalized job descriptions and requirements from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and were specic to the particular occupation. In order to avoid order effects, two versions of each occupation were created with different ordering of the items. Participants were asked to rate on a scale of one to seven (1 = Not Relevant, 7 = Very Relevant) the items job relevance for the particular occupation.

Results Principal components analyses with Varimax rotations were performed on the responses to the relevance questions for the items for each occupation. High School Teacher, Mechanic, and Packer of Agricultural Produce (PAP) had the most consistent results. Factors with eigenvalues greater than one that contributed signicantly to the variance explained were selected for further analysis. For the variables that had loadings of greater that .6 on a particular factor, we performed a reliability analysis for those items. For the High School Teacher (HTS), there were four factors that t the selection criteria. Items in the rst factor were related to the applicants history of DUI charges (Chronbachs alpha = 0.87). Items in the second factor related to the applicants general driving record (Chronbachs alpha = 0.86). The third factor for HTS contained items related to the applicants past teaching records (Chronbachs alpha = 0.85). The nal factor contained items related to the applicants educational history (Chronbachs alpha = 0.77). For Mechanic (MEC), there were also four factors that t the selection criteria. The rst factor for MEC contained items related to the applicants general driving record (Chronbachs alpha = 0.93). Items related to the applicants education were included in the second factor (Chronbachs alpha = 0.83). The third factor was comprised of items related to community service in which the applicant participated (Chronbachs alpha = 0.88). The nal factor incorporated items related to the applicants criminal record (Chronbachs alpha = 0.91). Finally, for PAP, ve factors that t the selection criteria. The fth factor, however, only contained one variable, so it was dropped from further consideration. The rst factor included items related to the applicants criminal record (Chronbachs alpha = 0.92). Items related to basic skills such as reading and writing were contained in the

second factor (Chronbachs alpha = 0.79). The third factor consisted of items related to the applicants extracurricular activities in high school (Chronbachs alpha = 0.89). The nal factor was comprised of items relating to the applicants job history (Chronbachs alpha = 0.76). Once the four factors for each occupation were identied and conrmed with the reliability analysis, scales were created for each of the factors using the means of the items included in the factor. A repeated factor ANOVA was conducted on these scales to determine whether there were differences in relevance for these 12 scales. We performed this analysis across jobs because there are substantially different requirements for each of these three jobs (e.g., education, certication, etc.); it is likely that the relevance of items is not normally distributed within each job. The results indicated the means were signicantly different from each other (F3,90 = 13.95, p <0.01). Student-Newman-Keuls post hoc comparisons were performed to determine levels of relevance. The 12 scales fell into six overlapping categories of relevance. Items were chosen from the lowest category, middle category, and highest category, for low, moderate, and high levels of job relevancy to ensure that the items were distinctly different. Although it would have been desirable to have all relevancy levels represented for each job, the data did not support this. Consequently, we chose relevance items that were statistically different from each other regardless of the specic job to which they were related. Items that were found to have low relevance were PAP high school extracurricular activities, HTS general driving record, and MEC community service. Items that were found to have moderate relevance were HTS educational history and PAP criminal record. Items that were found to have high relevance were MEC criminal record, PAP employment history, and HTS employment history. Means and standard deviations for these scales are listed in Table 1.

Study Two Methods Design The study used a 2 (subject type: Student vs. Human Resource Professional) 2 (type of lie: omission vs. commission) 2 (outcome: perception of lying vs. hiring) 3 (relevance: low vs. moderate vs. high) mixed factorial design. Subject type, type of lie, and outcome were all between subject factors while relevance was a within subject factor.

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J Bus Psychol (2007) 22:19 Table 1 Relevance levels for job information Occupation Packer of agricultural produce Mechanic High school teacher High school teacher High school teacher Mechanic Packer of agricultural produce High school teacher Item Extracurricular activities Service donated to applicants community General driving record Educational history Citations for driving under the inuence of alcohol Criminal record Employment history Employment history Level of relevance Low Low Low Moderate Moderate High High High M 2.60 2.69 2.70 3.66 4.21 5.19 5.78 5.71 SD

1.44 1.12 1.50 1.34 1.79 1.29 1.33 1.17

Participants The survey was given to two separate samples. The rst sample consisted of students at a large state university in California who did not participate in study one. The students were given the incentive of being entered into a drawing for a $50.00 prize. A total of 78 surveys were collected from students (38 females and 40 males). Seventy-eight% of the student sample was between 20 and 25. Twenty-three percent of those students surveyed claimed they had HR management experience. Surveys were also mailed to 270 HR Professionals (sample two) in the same region of California. The HR Professionals were given the incentive of a drawing for one of three $50.00 prizes. A total of 82 surveys (64 females and 18 males) with complete information were returned for a 32% response rate. Sixty-four percent of the second sample was between the ages of 26 and 60. Apparatus A questionnaire with a short scenario containing a ctitious company and a job description for each of the three occupations (PAP, MEC, and HTS) was developed asking the participant to imagine a hypothetical male applying for a job. We kept the applicant male to avoid possible confound issues related to gender which are beyond the scope of this paper. After the scenario, participants were presented with 16 of the items obtained from study one to form the scales of low, moderate, and high relevance. Omission/Commission Separate questionnaires were created for each of the occupations, resulting in two types for each occupation. In one version, all 20 items were set up as omission misrepresentations, that is, nondisclosure of the information contained in the item. For example, in the mechanic omission questionnaire the item was worded as, He did not disclose the reason for his criminal record. In the

second version for each occupation, all 20 items were set up as commission misrepresentations, that is, untrue statements about the information contained in the item. In this version, the example provided above was worded as, The reason for his criminal record is different from what he stated. Although treating this as a between subject factor could create a confound, mixing items of omission and commission could lead to other biases. Lies of omission, by themselves, could be attributed as a mistake or oversight. Presenting participants with both lies of omission and commission could lead them to make an intentional attribution for omissions. Further, it could create a contrast effect between the two types of lies, making each seem worse in comparison than they would separately. Outcome Measures For each of the six types of the questionnaires created above (omission/commission versions for each of the three occupations), two further iterations were created. In one version, participants were asked to rate their perception of lying of the misrepresentation on a scale of 19 (1 = Denitely Not a Lie, 9 = Denitely a Lie). In the second version, participants were asked to rate the degree to which they would still be willing to hire an applicant who had misrepresented information in the manner described. Relevance and Procedure To ensure that each participant would rate low, moderate, and high relevant job items, they received questionnaires for all three occupations. This resulted in four nal versions of the survey: (1) Commission misrepresentation items for all three occupations in which participants were asked to rate the degree to which the items were a lie; (2) Omission misrepresentation items for all three occupations in which participants were asked to rate the degree to which the items were a lie; (3) Commission misrepresentation items for all three occupations in which participants were asked

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to rate whether they would hire the applicant; and (4) Omission misrepresentation items for all three occupations in which participants were asked to rate whether they would hire the applicant. Each participant only received one version that included all three occupations.

support for hypothesis 3a; there is a difference between HR professionals and students, but not in the way that was predicted. HR professionals were less likely to perceive misrepresentations as lies. Hiring Results indicate a signicant main effect for relevance (F2,152 = 102.81, p <.01), type of misrepresentation (F1,76 = 44.94, p <.01), and for subject type (F1,76 = 5.46, p <.05) on the willingness to hire measure. HR professionals (M = 4.50, SD = .17) were more willing than students (M = 3.90, SD = .19) to hire individuals who misrepresented information. The signicant main effects for relevance and type of misrepresentation are qualied, however, by a signicant two-way interaction (F2,152 = 5.87, p <.01). The means and standard deviations for this interaction are presented in Table 3 and are plotted in Fig. 2. It appears from Table 3 that for low and moderately relevant items, there is a difference in the willingness to hire an applicant who overtly misrepresents information (commission) than an applicant who simply omits information. For high relevance items there is no difference between lies of omission and commission. Based upon these results, there is some support for hypotheses 1b, and 2b, although not the originally hypothesized main effects. There is also a signicant difference between HR professionals and students as predicted by hypothesis 3b, although it is in the opposite direction. HR professionals were more likely to hire applicants who misrepresented information. Discussion Research has examined the most common types of misrepresentations that occur on job applications. It has not examined, however, differences in attitudes toward the situation when an applicant overtly lies or when they simple omit information. Further, this research has not examined the potential relevance of the misrepresented information to the job being performed. Finally, research

Results A 2 (Respondent: student vs. human resource professional) 3 (Relevance: low vs. moderate vs. high) 2 (type of misrepresentation: commission vs. omission) 2 (outcome: perception of lying vs. hiring) MANOVA was conducted. Given that there was a signicant effect for the lie vs. hire distinction (F1,151 = 163.95, p <.01) indicating that participants considered the questions differently, and that there was no signicant 4-way interaction (F2,150 = 2.14, p > .10), we conducted the remaining analysis for the different outcomes (perception of lying vs. hiring) separately. Perception of Lying Results indicate a signicant main effect for both relevance (F2,150 = 114.46, p <.01) and type of misrepresentation (F1,75 = 44.94, p <.01). There were no signicant differences between students and HR professionals in their perceptions of misrepresentations as being lies. The signicant main effects are qualied, however, by signicant two-way interactions for both relevance type of misrepresentation (F2,150 = 26.98, p <.01) and relevance subject type (F2,150 = 7.50, p <.01). These signicant two-way interactions are also qualied by a signicant three-way interaction (F2,150 = 3.33, p <.05). The means and standard deviations for the three-way interaction are presented in Table 2 and are plotted in Fig. 1. It appears from table two that for moderate and high relevant items, students are more likely than HR professionals to perceive omission representations as lies. Based upon these results there is some support for hypotheses 1a, and 2a, although not the originally hypothesized main effects. There is also limited

Table 2 Relevance respondent type type of misrepresentation interaction on the lying scales Management students Omission M (SE) Low relevance Moderate relevance High relevance 3.49a (1.89) 6.61a (1.48) 7.91a (.90) Commission M (SE) 6.69b (1.11) 7.91b (1.05) 8.01a (.80) HR professionals Omission M (SE) 3.94a (2.22) 5.63c (1.57) 6.40b (1.38) Commission M (SE) 6.80b (1.50) 7.63b (1.11) 7.76a (.86)

Note: Scale 1 = Denitely not a lie to 9 = Denitely a lie Means with different subscripts within a row are signicantly different at the p <.05 level

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9 8

7
9 Omission 8 7 Commission

6
Perceptions of Lying Scale

6 5

Hiring Scales
Students Omission Students Commission HR Professionals Omission HR Professionals Commission Low Relevance Moderate Relevance High Relevance

5 4 3

2
3 2

1 0 Low Relevance Moderate Relevance High Relevance

1 0

Fig. 2 Relevance type of misrepresentation interaction on the hiring scale

Fig. 1 Relevance respondent type type of misrepresentation interaction on the lying scales

Table 3 Relevance type of misrepresentation interaction on the hiring scale Commission lies M (SE) Low relevance Moderate relevance High relevance 4.77b (1.92) 3.36c (1.33) 2.79c (1.34) Omission lies M (SE) 6.45a (1.64) 4.59b (1.13) 3.35c (1.14)

that lies of omission require the perceiver to determine applicants intentions. It is possible that students are more likely to give applicants the benet of the doubt. When the relevance of the information is low, HR professionals may be less suspicious of an applicants intentions. For willingness to hire, there was a signicant interaction between the type of lie and the relevance of the information. There is no difference in willingness to hire between applicants who omit information and those that overtly misstate information (commission) when it is highly relevant. For low and moderately relevant information, individuals are more willing to hire applicants who omit information than those that overtly misstate information. Limitations Although this study provides some interesting results for both HR Professionals and job applicants to consider, as with any study, there are limitations that need to be discussed. First, the results may reect a sampling bias. Only 30% of HR Professionals responded to the survey. Human Resource Professionals who responded to the survey may have certain concerns about the dishonesty that occurs on job applications while the 70% that did not respond, may have different concerns. Thus, the responses from the 30% who returned the survey may reect a greater interest in issues that are not shared by HR Professionals, in general. Further, because of the limited response rate, the sample size may have been too small to detect a signicant fourway interaction (respondent type relevance type of misrepresentation outcome). Indeed, the observed power was .44 (which is low). It is interesting that despite the fairly low power, that we did nd signicant 3-way interactions. Regardless, future research with larger sample sizes is warranted.

Note: Scale 1 = Denitely not hire to 9 = Denitely a hire Means with different subscripts are signicantly different at the p <.05 level.

has not specically compared the attitudes of HR professionals and future applicants toward lying. The current study was designed to address these gaps in the literature. The only signicant main effect that was found was contrary to hypothesis 3b, that HR professionals were actually more likely to hire individuals who had misrepresented information on their applications. Although the other main effect hypotheses were not directly supported, signicant interaction effects were found for both perceptions of lying and willingness to hire. For perceptions of lying there was a signicant three-way interaction such that HR professionals showed less differentiation than students between lies of omission vs. commission for moderate and highly job relevant information, but that there were no differences between the groups for low job relevant information. When information is at least moderately job relevant, HR professionals may be more suspicious of applicants intentions because of their experience. Recall

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A second limitation is that relevancy of job application items was determined by pilot testing with students. The main study results demonstrate that HR Professionals differ from students as to whether misrepresentations on job applications constitute lies. It may be that students and HR Professionals also have different understandings about the relevance of items on job applications. Thus, the independent classication of application items as low, moderate, or high relevance may reect students biases and may not be shared by HR Professionals. To test for this potential bias, we collected surveys from HR professionals approximately 6 months after the study two surveys were collected. These surveys were identical to the surveys used in study one to determine the relevance of job information. Analyses indicated that there were no statistically signicant differences between HR professionals and students for the scales that are listed in Table 1.1 Finally, there may be important factors not included in the current study that affect individuals perception of misrepresentations on job applications as lies. For example, if a participant is presented with an item of commission regarding an applicants driving record, the participant might use other information to generate rationalizations or alternative explanations for the misrepresentations. For example, the participant might consider other irrelevant factors such as applicants age to determine that they sincerely failed to recall minor offenses that are almost off of their record (e.g., a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt). Failure to measure these factors could lead to inaccurate generalizations of the current studys ndings. Strengths of the Current Study This study is the rst to systematically examine reactions to misrepresentations on job applications by HR Professionals. Studies before have questioned applicants about their perceptions of tolerance levels of misrepresentations by HR Professionals but have not asked the HR Professionals directly. It is also the rst to compare differences in perceptions between groups; in this case, HR Professionals and students. Further, this is the rst study that we are aware of that directly considered the job relevance of the misrepresented information and whether it was a lie of omission or commission. Future Directions There has been limited research that has studied lying on job applications. Therefore, there are many potential future
1 There were not a sufcient number of surveys returned for the High School Teacher to test for differences between students and HR professionals. All other scales were not signicantly different. Results of the post study comparisons are available upon request.

directions for this stream of research. One interesting area concerns how these perceptions of lying affect the employment relationship between individuals and employers if lies are discovered after the applicant has been hired. A second interesting direction for this research would be to examine the relations between individuals who misrepresent information on job applications and their on-the-job performance. On-the-job performance could include specic job performance as well as other deviant types of actions such as disciplinary problems or the applicants propensity to steal. Finally, it would also be helpful to be able to more closely examine differences in perceptions of lying between occupations. As a result of the limitations of our pilot results, we were not able to identify low, moderate, and high relevant items for each specic job. Future research should examine specic occupations in more detail. For example, misrepresentations by an applicant applying for an agricultural packer position might be perceived differently than misrepresentations of someone applying for work as a pediatrician or law enforcement ofcer. It is possible that dishonest information by an agricultural packer applicant might be considered more acceptable than dishonesty on the part of a candidate for a police ofcer position. Implications Human Resource Professionals should be aware of the fact that students were more likely to view misrepresentations as lies, even lies of omission in areas of moderate to high relevance. That is, business studentstomorrows managersand HR Professionalsthose hiring tomorrows managers, do not agree on misrepresentations on job applications. We can think of at least two reasons for these differences between the two samples in the current study. First, recent scandals such as Enron, Martha Stewart, and Tyco may sensitize students to the importance of acting ethically in business. These cases, which have received a considerable amount of public attention, have been used as classroom and textbook examples of the negative consequences associated with unethical behavior. Thus, students may be more likely to view any type of misrepresentation (omission or commission) as unethical. It is interesting that the current study ndings are not consistent with earlier studies which found that students thought it was more acceptable to lie to an employer than to a romantic partner (Robinson et al. 1998) and that 95% of one sample were willing to lie to get a job (McShulskis 1997). Most of these scandals have occurred since these earlier studies were performed. Thus, business schools may be having a positive effect on student attitudes toward ethical behavior. A second reason for the difference between the two samples in the current study is that experienced HR

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professionals may have become desensitized to lying on applications or resumes. One possibility is that they have personally experienced enough misrepresentation on resumes and applications that they are willing to tolerate the behavior. Further, the scandals discussed above may have had the reverse effect on recruiters. Without discussions and analysis of these events (as students experience as part of their educational experience), recruiters may view unethical behavior as part of the business world, and thus be more willing to accept it. Lying on applications may seem inconsequential compared to defrauding thousands of employees out of their retirement savings. Finally, recruiters may be more tolerant when positions are difcult to ll or when there is low unemployment (Solomon 1998). Although the size of applicant pools uctuate, once recruiters ease their standards in tough times, they may simply not re-adjust them. These results also indicate that in an effort to avoid omissions, Human Resource Professionals should be very thorough in questioning an applicants background. Applicants who are not directly asked important information are unlikely to see the failure to disclose this information as a lie (Schweitzer and Croson 1999). Consequently, individuals may be more likely to withhold relevant information (e.g., a criminal record) if these questions are not specically asked. When obtaining information from applicants, asking vague questions does not provide adequate knowledge of the candidate. More direct questioning, however, will force applicants to make statements of commission rather than to simply omit information. Further, applications should specically state that failure to completely provide requested information will result in the applicant being removed from further consideration for the position. These results may help to provide an explanation for lying on job applications. Research has shown that some applicants believe that employers expect a certain degree of exaggeration (Robinson 1998). Results of the current study suggest applicants may be correct and that employers may be, in fact, more tolerant of lying than potential applicants. Further, the results suggest that employers who learn about misrepresentations are more likely than potential applicants to hire individuals who lie on job applications. It may benet organizations to educate their recruiters of the potential negative consequences of hiring individuals who have omitted or falsied information on their job applications or resume. In addition, employers should warn applicants that omitted or falsied information on applications or resumes will result in some type of negative action (removal of the individual from the applicant pool or termination if the lie is discovered after the individual has

been hired). Applicants need to understand that lying on job applications may decrease the likelihood of obtaining the position if the lies are detected. By training recruiters, organizations may be able realize the following benets: a decrease in the amount of lying that occurs on applications and resumes; an increase in the likelihood that recruiters will view misrepresentations as lies; and a decrease in the likelihood that they will hire a fraudulent applicant.
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Julie OlsonBuchanan for her help in developing and conducting this research. We would also like to Jennifer Isom Schmidtke for her assistance.

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